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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The War and the Churches, by Joseph McCabe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The War and the Churches
+
+
+Author: Joseph McCabe
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2006  [eBook #18650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Irma Spehar and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/warandchurches00mccauoft
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
+
+by
+
+JOSEPH McCABE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited]
+London: Watts & Co. 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+WORKS BY THE AUTHOR
+
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+_Peter Abelard_ (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.
+
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+
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+
+_The Iron Cardinal_ (Nash). 12/-
+
+_Goethe_ (Nash). 15/-
+
+_A Candid History of the Jesuits_ (Nash). 10/6.
+
+_The Evolution of Mind_ (Black). 5/-
+
+_Evolution_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
+
+_Prehistoric Man_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
+
+_The Principles of Evolution_ (The Nation's Library). 1/-
+
+_The Decay of the Church of Rome_ (Methuen), 2nd ed. 7/6.
+
+_The Story of Evolution_ (Hutchinson), 2nd ed. 7/6.
+
+_The Empresses of Rome_ (Methuen). 12/6.
+
+_The Empresses of Constantinople_ (Methuen). 12/6.
+
+_Church Discipline_ (Duckworth). 3/6.
+
+_Can we Disarm?_ (Heinemann). 2/6.
+
+_In the Shade of the Cloister_ (pseudonymous--Constable). 6/-
+
+_The Bible in Europe_ (Watts). 3/6.
+
+_The Religion of Woman_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_Woman in Political Evolution_ (Watts). _6d._
+
+_Haeckel's Critics Answered_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_From Rome to Rationalism_ (Watts), 4th ed. _4d._
+
+_The Origin of Life_ (Watts). 1/-
+
+_Secular Education_ (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-
+
+_The Martyrdom of Ferrer_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_The Religion of the Twentieth Century_ (Watts). 1/-
+
+_A Hundred Years of Education Controversy_ (Watts). _3d._
+
+_The Existence of God_ (Watts). _9d._
+
+_Shakespeare and Goethe_ (Cole). _6d._
+
+_George Bernard Shaw_ (Kegan Paul). 7/6.
+
+_The Religion of Sir Oliver Lodge_ (Watts). 2/-
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The searching crisis through which the nation is passing must have the
+effect of securing grave consideration for many aspects of our life and
+institutions. We have already traversed the acute stage of suspense, and
+are gradually becoming sensible of these wider considerations. It was
+natural that for a prolonged period the disturbance of our economic
+conditions, the anxiety for the safety of our nation in face of an
+appalling menace, the personal concern of millions about the lives of
+sons or brothers who have bravely responded to the call, should keep our
+thoughts enchained to the daily or hourly fortunes of the field of
+battle. Now that the initial disorder has been allayed and we have
+attained a quiet and reasonable confidence in the issue, we turn to
+other and broader aspects of this mighty event of our generation. How
+comes it that the most enlightened century the world has yet seen should
+be thus darkened by one of the bloodiest and most calamitous wars that
+have ever spread their awful wings over the life of man? Where is all
+the optimism of yesterday? Must we reconsider our reasoned boast that
+our civilisation has lifted the life of man to a level hitherto
+unattained? Is there something entirely and most mischievously wrong
+with the foundations of modern civilisation?
+
+A dozen such questions will press for an answer, but it will be granted
+that one of the most urgent and most interesting of the many grave
+considerations which the war suggests is its relation to the prevailing
+creeds and standards of conduct. The war coincides with an advanced
+stage of what is called the spread of unbelief. In each of the nations
+of Europe which are engaged in this awful struggle complaints have been
+made every year for the last two or three generations that Christianity
+is losing its moral control of the white race. In the cities, especially
+in the capitals, of Europe there has been a proved and acknowledged
+decay of church-going; and, however much we may be disposed to think
+that these millions who no longer attend church retain in their minds
+the beliefs of their fathers, the slender circulation of religious
+literature makes it plain that the vast majority of them do not, in
+point of fact, receive either the spoken or written message of the
+Christian Church. In the great cities--and it is undoubted that the life
+of a nation is mainly controlled by its cities--there has been an
+increasing reluctance to listen to the authoritative exponents of the
+Christian gospel.
+
+A number of the clergy have very naturally noticed and stressed this
+coincidence. Prelates of high authority have, as we shall see, even
+declared that the war is a scourge deliberately laid on the back of
+mankind by the Almighty on account of this spreading infidelity. As a
+rule, the clergy shrink from advocating a theory which has such grave
+implications as this has, and they are content to submit the more
+plausible suggestion, that the decay of the Christian standard of
+conduct in the mind of a large proportion of our generation accounts for
+this tragic combat of nations. A distinguished Positivist writer, Mr. J.
+Cotter Morison, commenting in the last generation on the decay of
+Christian belief, expressed some such concern in the following terms:
+
+     "It would be rash to expect that a transition, unprecedented for
+     its width and difficulty, from theology to positivism, from the
+     service of God to the service of Man, could be accomplished without
+     jeopardy. Signs are not wanting that the prevalent anarchy in
+     thought is leading to anarchy in morals. Numbers who have put off
+     belief in God have not put on belief in Humanity. A common and
+     lofty standard of duty is being trampled down in the fierce battle
+     of incompatible principles."[1]
+
+It is true that in the work from which I quote[1] the learned, if
+somewhat nervous, Positivist does not, by his masterly survey of the
+moral history of Europe, afford us the least reason to think that we
+have really deteriorated from the standard of conduct set us by earlier
+generations, but his words do tend to press on our notice the claim of
+many writers, clerical and non-clerical, that we are returning from
+Christianity to Paganism, from a settled moral discipline to an
+unhealthy moral scepticism. Can one entirely and safely reconstruct the
+bases of personal and national conduct in one or two generations?
+
+This very plain and plausible theory is, however, exposed to criticism
+from other points of view. The clergy as a body are not at all willing
+to concede that the decay of belief has spread as far as the theory
+would suggest. In order to suppose that the life of Europe has, in a
+matter of the gravest importance, been directed by a non-Christian
+spirit, one must assume that at least the majority in each nation have
+deserted the traditional creed. It is by no means conceded or
+established that the fighting nations have ceased to be predominantly
+Christian. Indeed, if we confine the awful responsibility for this
+tragedy, as the evidence compels us, to Germany and Austria-Hungary, we
+are casting it upon the two nations which have been the chief
+representatives in Europe of the two leading branches of the Church.
+Most assuredly no prelate of either country would admit that his nation
+has ceased to be Christian or surrendered its life to non-Christian
+impulses; and in our own country we have frequently been assured of late
+years that the real power of Christianity was never greater.
+
+Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
+practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
+becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
+responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
+not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
+and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind departed from some
+admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
+religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
+arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
+in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
+not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
+which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
+Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
+assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it an
+element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
+employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends also
+to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be prolonged
+into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the Thirty
+Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance of
+ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
+modern war. Nor may we forget that it is the modern spirit which has
+claimed some alleviation of the horrors of the field, and that the
+majority of the nations engaged in the present struggle have observed
+the new rules.
+
+These considerations show that the problem is less simple and more
+serious than is often supposed, and I set out to discuss each of them
+with some fullness. That the war has _no_ relation to the Churches will
+hardly be claimed by anybody. Such a claim would mean that they were
+indifferent to one of the very gravest phases of human conduct, or
+wholly unable to influence it. Nor can we avoid the issue by pleading
+that Christianity approves and blesses a just defensive war, and that,
+since the share of this country in the war is entirely just and
+defensive, we have no moral problem to consider. I have assuredly no
+intention of questioning either the justice of Britain's conduct or the
+prudence of the Churches in adapting the maxims of the Sermon on the
+Mount to the practical needs of life. If and when a nation sees its life
+and prosperity threatened by an ambitious or a jealous neighbour, one
+cannot but admire its clergy for joining in the advocacy of an efficient
+and triumphant defence. But this is merely a superficial and proximate
+consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
+it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
+the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
+an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
+moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
+Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding of
+the conduct of Europe.
+
+But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
+influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most
+interesting questions suggested by the relation of the war to the
+prevailing religion. The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day
+raises again in its most acute form the problem of evil and Providence.
+More than two thousand years ago, as _Job_ reminds us, some difficulty
+was experienced in justifying the ways of God to men. The most
+penetrating thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once
+more with the problem, as if no word had been written on it; and he
+wrestled in vain. A century and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake
+destroyed forty thousand Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal
+unsuccess, to vindicate Providence with the faint hope of the Deist.
+Modern science, prolonging the sufferings of living things over earlier
+millions of years, has made that problem one of the great issues of our
+age, and this dread spectacle of _human_ nature red in tooth and claw
+brings it impressively before us. Is the work of God restricted to
+counting the hairs of the head, and not enlarged to check the murderous
+thoughts in the human brain? Nay, when we survey those horrid stretches
+of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated
+bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of
+their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile
+marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose
+flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic
+feeling alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions
+of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss--how can we repeat
+the ancient assurance that God _does_ count the hairs of the head and
+mark the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars
+only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous
+little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?
+
+These are reflections which must occur to every thoughtful person in the
+later and more meditative phases of a great war, when the eye has grown
+somewhat weary of the glitter of steel and the colour of banners, when
+the world mourns about us and the long lists of the dead and longer list
+of the stupendous waste sober the mind. Something is gravely wrong with
+our international life; and, plainly, it is not a question _whether_
+that international life departs from the Christian standard, but _why_,
+after fifteen hundred years of mighty Christian influence, it does so
+depart. Is the moral machinery of Europe ineffective? One certainly
+cannot say that it has not had a prolonged trial; yet here, in the
+twentieth century, we have, in the most terrible form, one of the most
+appalling evils which human agency ever brought upon human hearts. We
+have to reconsider our religious and ethical position; to ask ourselves
+whether, if the influence of religion has failed to direct men into
+paths of wisdom and peace, some other influence may not be found which
+will prove more persuasive and more beneficent.
+
+J. M.
+
+_Easter, 1915._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                              PAGE
+
+  I.  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES             1
+ II.  CHRISTIANITY AND WAR                          25
+III.  THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY                   48
+ IV.  THE WAR AND THEISM                            70
+  V.  THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE                         95
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES
+
+
+The first question which the unprejudiced inquirer will seek to answer
+is: How far were the Churches able to prevent, yet remiss in using their
+influence to prevent, the present war? There is, unhappily, in these
+matters no such thing as an entirely unprejudiced inquirer. Our
+preconceived ideas act like magnets on the material of evidence which is
+submitted to us, instinctively selecting what bears in their favour and
+declining to receive what they cannot utilise. Nowhere is this more
+conspicuous than in the field of religious inquiry, nor is it confined
+to either believers or unbelievers. There has been too much mutual
+abuse, and too little attention to the fact that the mind no less than
+the mouth has its palate, its impulsive selections and rejections. One
+can meet the difficulty only by a patient and full examination of the
+pleas of both parties to a controversy.
+
+And the first plea which it is material to examine is that, since it is
+claimed that all the nations engaged in the war are Christian nations,
+one may accuse them collectively of moral failure. From the earliest
+days of the Christian religion it was the boast of those who accepted
+it that it abolished all distinctions of caste and race. In the little
+community which gathered round the cross there was neither bond nor
+free, neither Greek nor Roman. This cosmopolitanism was, in fact, a
+natural feature of religious movements at the time, and was due not so
+much to their intrinsic development as to the political circumstances of
+the world in which they spread. All round the eastern and northern
+shores of the Mediterranean a great variety of races mingled in every
+port and every commercial town, and it was the policy of the powerful
+Empire which extended its sway over them all to overrule their national
+antagonisms. When, in the earlier period, Jew and Greek and Egyptian had
+maintained their separate nationalities, hostility to other races had
+been a very natural social quality, an inevitable part of the spirit of
+self-preservation in a race. When the great Empires had conquered the
+smaller nationalities or the decaying older Empires, this mutual
+hostility was moderated, and, as the vast movements of population which
+marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new era filled the
+Mediterranean cities with extraordinarily mixed crowds, mutual
+friendship became the more fitting and more useful social virtue. A good
+deal of the old narrow patriotism had been due to the fact that each
+nation had its own god. In the new Roman world this theological
+exclusivism broke down, and the priests of a particular god, scattered
+like their followers among the cities of the eastern world, began to
+seek a cosmopolitan rather than a nationalist following. In the temple
+of each of the leading gods of the time--Jahveh, Serapis, Mithra, and so
+on--people of all races and classes were received on a footing of
+equality. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man spread all over that
+cosmopolitan world.
+
+When the old world, to the south and east of the Mediterranean, was
+blotted out of history, and Europe in turn became a group of conflicting
+nationalities, racial hatred was revived and in its political and social
+aspects the doctrine of the brotherhood of man was virtually forgotten.
+But the Christian Church had embodied that doctrine in its sacred
+writing, and was bound to maintain it. In its ambition of a universal
+dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races
+of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world
+and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this
+change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of
+insincerity to the Christian gospel. In the older days there had been
+political unity with a great diversity of religions; now there was
+religious unity spread over a great diversity of antagonistic political
+bodies. Men were brothers from the religious point of view and, only too
+frequently, deadly enemies from the political point of view. The discord
+was made worse by the feudal system which was adopted. Even within the
+same race there was no brotherhood. In effect the clergy as a body did
+not insist that the noble was a brother of the serf, and did not exact
+fraternal treatment of the serf. Thus the phrase, "the brotherhood of
+man," which had been a most prominent and active principle of early
+Christianity, became little more than a useless theological thesis.
+
+The solution of the difficulty would, of course, have been for the
+clergy, as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood,
+to apply that doctrine boldly to every part of man's conduct; to
+pronounce that all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a
+humane means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the
+next chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great
+reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of
+modern times favoured a fresh assertion of the doctrine of brotherhood.
+Great as the power of sincere moral idealism has always been, the
+historian must recognise that economic changes have had a most important
+influence upon the development or acceptance of moral ideas. Just as in
+earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned by changes
+in their material surroundings, so man's moral development has been
+profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political changes.
+
+The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern worker
+were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
+important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
+asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers
+from the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them,
+and even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
+social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
+brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical
+facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in
+their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood,
+the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative
+that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the
+whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
+social and religious sense.
+
+This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
+political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong _prima
+facie_ case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
+It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
+socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
+with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
+on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
+relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
+criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
+revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
+mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
+that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
+_guilt_, but the _social effect_, which we regard. And from this point
+of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
+Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
+the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
+and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
+industry and commerce, no less a sum than £9,000,000,000; and it will
+certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
+besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
+relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will
+come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
+have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
+order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
+destructions of the entire social order of nations.
+
+It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection
+with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
+the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal
+conduct, they have no _raison d'être_. Few of them to-day will plead
+that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they
+regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of
+our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such
+importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is
+abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what
+they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were
+slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.
+
+In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
+their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
+of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
+declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that
+they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however
+much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for
+years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half
+of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the
+greatest war in history. Now it is notorious that the Christian Churches
+have done little or nothing, in proportion to their mighty resources and
+influence, to avert this danger. No collective action has been taken,
+and relatively few individuals have used their influence to moderate or
+obviate the danger. The supreme head of the most powerfully organised
+and most cosmopolitan religious body in the world, an institution which
+has its thousands of ministers among each of the antagonistic peoples--I
+mean the Church of Rome--gave his attention to minute questions of
+doctrine and administration, and bemoaned repeatedly the evil spirit of
+our age, but issued not one single syllable of precise and useful
+direction to the various national regiments of his clergy in connection
+with this terrible impending danger. The heads or Councils of the
+various Protestant bodies were equally remiss. Here and there individual
+clergymen joined associations, founded by laymen, which endeavoured to
+maintain peace and to secure arbitration upon quarrels, and one Sunday
+in the year was set aside by the pulpits for the vague gospel of peace.
+But in almost all cases these movements were purely secular in origin,
+and the few movements of a religious nature have been obviously founded
+only to keep the idealism linked with a particular Church, have had no
+great influence, and have been too vague in their principles to have had
+any effect upon the growing chances of a European war. There is no doubt
+that the Churches have remained almost dumb while Europe was preparing
+for its Armageddon.
+
+I speak of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be
+confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a
+considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have
+even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of
+initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more
+leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian spirit, yet it
+would be absurd to restrict the criticism to them. The various Christian
+bodies, as a whole, have confronted a very grave and imminent danger
+with remarkable indifference, although that danger could become an
+actual infliction only by seriously immoral conduct on the part of some
+nation. They saw, as we all saw, the vast armies preparing for the fray,
+the diplomatists betraying an increasing concern about the relations
+between their respective nations, the press embittering those relations,
+and a pernicious and provocative literature inflaming public opinion. We
+all saw these things, and knew that a war of appalling magnitude would
+follow the first infringement of peace. Yet I think it will hardly be
+controverted that the Churches made no serious effort to avert that
+calamity from Europe. They were deeply concerned about unbelief, about
+personal purity, about the cleanness of plays and books and pictures,
+even about questions of social reform which a rebellious democracy
+forced on them; but they took no initiative and performed no important
+service in connection with this terrible danger.
+
+That is the indictment which many bring against Christianity, and we
+have now to consider the general defence. I will examine later a number
+of religious pronouncements about the war, and will discuss here only a
+few general pleas which are put forward as a defence against the general
+indictment.
+
+It is, in the first place, urged that the moral and humanitarian
+teaching which the Christian Churches never ceased to put before the
+world condemned in advance every departure from the paths of justice and
+charity; that it was not the fault of Christianity if men refused to
+listen to or carry into practice that teaching. But at no period in the
+history of morals has it sufficed to lay down general principles.
+Everybody perceives to-day, not only that slavery was in itself a crime,
+but that it was essentially opposed to the Christian morality. Yet, as
+no Christian teacher for many centuries ventured to apply the principle
+by expressly denouncing slavery, the institution was taken over from
+Paganism by Christian Europe and lasted centuries after the fall of the
+Roman Empire. The Church itself had vast numbers of slaves, and later of
+serfs, on its immense estates. Leo the Great disdainfully enacted that
+the priesthood must not be stained by admitting so "vile" a class to its
+ranks, and Gregory the Great had myriads of slaves on the Papal
+"patrimonies." So it was with the demand for social reform which
+characterised the nineteenth century. To-day Christians claim that their
+principles sanctioned and gave weight to those early demands of reform,
+yet their principles had been vainly repeated in Europe for fifteen
+hundred years, and, when the people themselves at last formulated their
+demands in the early part of the nineteenth century, it is notorious
+that the clergy opposed them. The teaching of abstract moral principles
+is of no avail. Man is essentially a casuist. Leave to him the
+application of your principles, and he will adapt almost any scheme of
+conduct to them. The moralist who does not boldly and explicitly point
+the application of his principles is either too ignorant of human nature
+to discharge his duty with effect or is a coward. The plain fact is that
+the preaching of justice and peace throughout Europe has been steadily
+accompanied by an increase in armaments and in international friction.
+It had no moral influence on the situation.
+
+A more valid plea is that we must distinguish carefully between the
+nations which inaugurated the war and the nations which are merely
+defending themselves, and we must quarrel with the Christian Churches
+only in those lands which are guilty. It may, indeed, be pleaded that,
+since each nation regards itself as acting on the defensive and uses
+arguments to this effect which convince its jurists and scholars no less
+than its divines, there is no occasion at all to introduce Christianity.
+Most of us do not merely admit the right, we emphasise the duty, of
+every citizen to take his share in the just defence of his country,
+either by arms or by material contribution. Since there seems to be a
+general conviction even in Germany and Austria that the nation is
+defending itself against jealous and designing neighbours, why quarrel
+with their clergy for supporting the war?
+
+When the plea is broadened to this extent we must emphatically reject
+it. There has been too much disposition among moralists to listen
+indulgently to such talk as this. When we find five nations engaged in a
+terrible war, and each declaring that it is only defending itself
+against its opponent, the cynic indeed may indolently smile at the
+situation, but the man of principle has a more rigorous task. Some one
+of those peoples is lying or is deceived, and, in the future interest of
+mankind, it is imperative to determine and condemn the delinquent. There
+is no such thing as an inevitable war, nor does the burden of great
+armaments lead of itself to the opening of hostilities. It is certain
+that on one side or the other, if not on both sides, there is a terrible
+guilt, and it is the duty of Christian or any other moralists, whether
+or no they belong to the guilty nations, sternly to assign and condemn
+that guilt. It is precisely on this loose and lenient habit of mind that
+the engineers of aggressive war build in our time, and we have seen, in
+the case of neutral nations and of a section of our own nation, what
+chances they have of succeeding. They have only to fill their people and
+the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely mendacious, and
+many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and
+declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a
+fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or
+more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or
+other, acquiesced in a crime.
+
+The plea is valid only to this extent, that the guilty nations in this
+case were notoriously Germany and Austria-Hungary, and therefore one
+cannot pass any censure on British Christians for supporting the war. I
+have in other works dealt so fully with the guilt of those two nations
+that here I must be content to assume it. The general and incessant cry
+of the German people, that they are only defending their Empire against
+malignant enemies, must be understood in the light of their recent
+history and literature. No Power in the world had given any indication
+of a wish to destroy Germany; there were, at the most, a few
+uninfluential appeals in England for an attack on Germany, but solely on
+the ground that it meditated an attack on England, and the accumulated
+evidence now shows that it did meditate such an attack. England did not
+desire an acre of German ground. France had assuredly not forgotten
+Alsace and Lorraine, but France would have had no support, and would
+have failed ignominiously, in an aggressive campaign to secure those
+provinces. On the other hand, an immense and weighty literature, which
+is unfortunately very little known in England, has familiarised Germany
+for fifteen years with aggressive ideas. The most authoritative writers
+claimed that, as they said repeatedly, "Germany must and will expand";
+and leagues which numbered millions of subscribers propagated this
+sentiment in every school and village. A definite demand was made
+throughout Germany for more colonies and a longer coast-line on the
+North Sea; and it was in relation to this ambition that England, France,
+and Russia were represented--and justly represented--as Germany's
+opponents. England, in particular, was described as the great dragon
+which watched at the gates of Germany and grimly forbade its
+"development." It is in this sense that the bulk of the German people
+maintain that their action is defensive.
+
+In passing, let me emphasise this peculiar economic difference between
+the four nations. Russia had a vast territory in which her people might
+develop. France had no surplus population, and had a large colonial
+field for such of her children as desired adventure abroad or would
+escape the competition at home. England had, in Canada and Australasia
+and South Africa, a magnificent estate for her surplus population. None
+of these Powers had an economic ground for aggression. Germany was
+undoubtedly in a far less fortunate position, and had an overflowing
+population. Six hundred thousand men and women (mostly men) had to leave
+the fatherland every year, and, as the colonies were small and
+unsatisfactory, they were scattered and lost among the nations of the
+earth. The proper attitude toward Germany is, not to gratify the cunning
+of her leaders by superficially admitting that she was not aggressive,
+but to understand clearly the very solid grounds of her desire for
+expansion.
+
+Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here.
+Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of
+the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that
+the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own
+industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such
+expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would
+suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war.
+Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were
+meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were
+utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not
+mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the
+other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or
+individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary
+principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were
+desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to
+assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany
+is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to
+defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for
+twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools;
+they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist
+propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive
+war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that,
+in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity
+should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext
+for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their
+passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and
+Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of
+justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass
+the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when, at
+the grave risk of a European war, Austria dishonestly annexed Bosnia and
+Herzegovina; they gave their tacit or open consent when Austria,
+refusing mediation, declared war on Serbia and inaugurated the titanic
+struggle; and they have passed no condemnation on the infamies which the
+Magyar troops perpetrated in Serbia.
+
+I am concerned mainly with the action or inaction of the Churches in
+this country, but it is entirely relevant to set out a brief statement
+of these facts about Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Christian religion
+was on trial in those countries as well as here. It failed so
+lamentably, not because there is more Christianity here than in Germany
+and Austria, not because the national character was inferior to the
+English and less apt to receive Christian teaching, but because the
+temptation was greater. Until this war occurred, no responsible
+traveller ever ventured to say that the German or Austrian character was
+inferior to the British. It is not. But the economic difficulties of
+Germany and the political difficulties (with the Slavs) of
+Austria-Hungary laid a heavier trial on those nations, and their
+Christianity entirely failed. Catholic and Protestant alike--for the two
+nations contain fifty million Catholics to sixty million
+Protestants--were swept onward in the tide of national passion, or
+feared to oppose it.
+
+One might have expected that at least the supreme head of the Roman
+Church would, from his detached throne in Rome, pass some grave censure
+on the outrages committed by Catholic Bavarians in Belgium or Catholic
+Magyars in Serbia. Not one syllable either on the responsibility for the
+war or the appalling outrages which have characterised it has come from
+him. The only event which drew from him a protest--a restrained and
+inoffensive remonstrance--was the confinement to his palace for some
+days of my old friend and teacher, Cardinal Mercier! To the stories of
+fearful and widespread outrage, even when they were sternly
+authenticated, he was deaf. One knows why. If Germany and Austria fail
+in this war, as they will fail, the Catholic bodies of Germany and
+Austria, the strongest Catholic political parties in Europe, will be
+broken. Millions of the Catholic subjects of Germany and Austria will
+pass under the rule of unbelieving France or schismatical Russia. So the
+supreme head of the Roman Church wraps himself nervously in a mantle of
+political neutrality and disclaims the duty of assigning moral guilt.
+
+On us in England was laid only the task of defending our homes and our
+honour. It is in those other countries that we most clearly see
+Christianity put to the test, and failing deplorably under the test. I
+do not mean that there was no opportunity here for the Churches to
+display their effectiveness as the moral guides of nations. In those
+fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly
+the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They
+did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the
+iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of
+their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I
+do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective
+armament, in England while the rest of the world remains armed. As long
+as we retain the military system instead of an international court, the
+soldier's profession is honourable, and the man who voluntarily faces
+the horrors of the field is entitled to respect and gratitude. But in
+every country there was an agitation for the _general_ abandonment of
+militarism and the substitution of lawyers for soldiers in the
+settlement of international quarrels. Had the Churches in every country
+given their whole support to this agitation, and insisted that it is
+morally criminal for the race as a whole to prolong the military system,
+we might not have witnessed this great catastrophe.
+
+Before, however, I press this charge against the Christian bodies, let
+me discuss the third plea that may be urged in defence of the Churches.
+It is the plea of those who are so eager to disclaim responsibility that
+they are willing to allow an enormous decay of religious influence in
+the modern world. You have repeatedly told us, they say to the
+Rationalist, that Christianity has lost its hold on Europe. You speak of
+millions who no longer hear the word of Christian ministers, but who
+_do_ read Rationalist literature in enormous quantities. Very well, you
+cannot have it both ways. Let us admit that the nations of Europe have
+become non-Christian, and we cast on your non-Christian influence the
+burden of responsibility for the war.
+
+This language has been used more than once in England. It leaves the
+speaker free to assume that in England, whose action in the war we do
+not criticise, the nation remains substantially Christian, while in
+Germany and Austria the Churches have lost more ground. Indeed, one may
+almost confine attention to Germany. Profoundly corrupt as political
+life has been in Austria-Hungary for years, there is no little evidence
+in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last
+moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria
+hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was
+Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its
+terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism
+and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in
+London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship.
+It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population
+attend church on Sundays. In other large towns of Germany the condition
+is, as in England, proportionate. Almost in proportion to the size of
+the town is the aversion of the people from the Churches.
+
+It is absolutely impossible in the case of Germany to determine, even in
+very round numbers, how many have abandoned their allegiance to
+Christianity, though, when one remembers the enormous rural population
+and the high proportion of believers in the smaller towns, it seems
+preposterous to suggest that the country has, even to the extent of one
+half, become non-Christian. But I am anxious to do justice to this plea,
+and would point out that it is the educated class and the men of the
+large cities who control a nation's policy. The rural population--the
+general population, in fact--follows its educated leaders. Now there is
+no doubt that in Germany, as elsewhere, this body of the population--the
+middle class and the workers of the great cities--has very largely lost
+the traditional belief. The workers of Berlin are solidly Socialistic,
+which means very largely anti-clerical. And I would boldly draw the
+conclusion that the responsibility for the war is shared at least
+equally by Christians and non-Christians. The stricture I have passed on
+the Churches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised
+bodies with a definite moral mission, were peculiarly bound to protest
+against the obvious political development of their country, and they
+entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the
+responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and
+Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have
+cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the
+first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real
+control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion--I
+should be disposed to say at least one half--are not Christians, or are
+Christians only in name.
+
+While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
+in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
+rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
+principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
+opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
+religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
+ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
+as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
+there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
+educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
+Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
+the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
+cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
+humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
+cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
+that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
+monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and
+Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald--all men of high moral
+idealism--gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
+this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents
+of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the
+Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to
+assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration,
+but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the
+influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in
+any degree facilitated the war.
+
+The Christian who regards all these non-Christian influences as "Pagan,"
+and feels that a "return to Paganism" explains the essential immorality
+of Germany's conduct, usually has a grossly inaccurate idea of Paganism.
+Whatever may be said of sexual developments in modern and ancient times,
+we shall see that the Roman writers held principles which most decidedly
+made for peace and brotherhood and justice. In point of fact, the
+majority of the German writers who have been responsible for the
+education of Germany in war-like ideas have been Christians. The Emperor
+himself, who is mainly responsible because of his deliberate
+prostitution of German schools to militarist purposes since 1891, will
+hardly be described as other than Christian; certainly every prelate or
+minister in Germany would vehemently resent such a description.
+Treitschke, who is probably the best known in England of the Imperialist
+writers, definitely bases his appalling conception of life on Christian
+principles, and claims that he is acting from a sense of the divine
+mission of Germany. General von Bernhardi uses precisely the same
+Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who,
+for more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive
+ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I
+should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a
+single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has
+contributed to their pernicious gospel.
+
+Probably the one German writer in the mind of those English people who
+speak of Germany's return to Paganism is Friedrich Nietzsche. It is true
+that Nietzsche was bitterly anti-Christian, and he has probably had a
+greater influence in Germany, in spite of his strictures on the country,
+than many seem disposed to allow. German booksellers have recently drawn
+up a statement in regard to the favourite books of soldiers in the
+field, and it appears that Nietzsche's _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ is
+second on the list--leagues ahead of the Bible. But to conclude from
+this that the anti-moral doctrine of the Pagan Nietzsche is the chief
+source of the outrages committed is one of those slipshod inferences
+which make one despair of Christian literature.
+
+In the first place, Goethe is even more popular with the troops than
+Nietzsche, and, although Goethe too was a Pagan, his teaching was the
+very antithesis of crime, violence, injustice, or hypocrisy. No nobler
+human doctrine was ever set forth than in the pages of his _Faust_, the
+first on this list of favourite books. In the second place, this fact at
+once warns us of a circumstance which we might have taken for granted:
+in the knapsacks of the overwhelming majority of the soldiers there are
+no books at all. It is the minority who read; and it is quite safe to
+assume that this thoughtful minority are not the minority who have
+disgraced German militarism. Thirdly--and it should hardly be necessary
+to make this observation--the sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would
+have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some
+ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he
+still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour
+out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially
+upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that
+Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he
+had only disdain, and it is folly to suppose that his aristocratic
+philosophy has been accepted among them as a gospel.
+
+Nietzsche has had a considerable influence on the more thoughtful
+reading public in Germany, yet even here one has to make reserves in
+charging him with a part in the preparation of the country for an
+aggressive war. His peculiar art and temperamental exaggerations make it
+impossible for any but a patient few to grasp his teaching accurately,
+and are peculiarly liable to mislead the less patient. When, therefore,
+he stresses--as most anti-Socialists do--the Darwinian struggle for
+existence, when he assails the humanitarian and Christian doctrine of
+helping the weak, when he calls into question the received code of
+morals, and when he extols self-assertion and strength of will, his
+fiery words do lend some confirmation, which he assuredly never
+intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much
+averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching,
+which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt
+for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We
+must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to
+the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von
+Bernhardi's admiring references to his philosophy sufficiently show
+this.
+
+But Nietzsche's very limited influence on German thought cannot
+reasonably be quoted as justification of the common saying that Germany
+had deserted Christianity for Paganism. Had such a statement been made
+before the war began, our divines would have indignantly repudiated it.
+The truth is that all classes--Christian and non-Christian--have yielded
+fatally to the pernicious interpretation which interested politicians,
+soldiers, manufacturers, and Jingoistic writers have put on the real
+economic needs of the country. Of the Socialist and Catholic parties, in
+particular, the two most powerfully organised bodies in Germany, we may
+say that, in deserting their ideals, they have been partly deceived into
+a real belief that Russia and England sought their destruction, and they
+have partly yielded to that very old and familiar temptation--the desire
+to retain their numerical strength by compromising with their
+principles. In justice to the Socialists it should be added that that
+party has furnished the only men and journals in Germany to raise any
+protest against the madness of the nation. One of the most repulsive
+moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most
+liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the
+people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has
+transpired time after time that the _Vorwärts_ has protested against
+this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or
+religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially
+sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no
+Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is
+reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the
+official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian
+protest, from end to end of the campaign.
+
+Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and
+non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real
+difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of
+the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity
+be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for
+this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the
+natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages
+ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official
+teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice
+of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries
+ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to
+assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric
+patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard
+the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral
+development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of
+nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is
+surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like
+Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by
+our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his
+opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in
+this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more
+deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of
+tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood,
+of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole
+kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race.
+War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of
+civilisation.
+
+The question of real interest is, therefore, the historical question.
+Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very
+penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours
+did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the
+participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain
+of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally persuading
+themselves that the action of their country is just and necessary. But
+from the day when we awoke to an adult perception of the life of the
+world we have been aware that the established system of settling
+international quarrels was barbaric and might in any year lead to just
+such a catastrophe. How comes it that such a system has survived fifteen
+hundred years of profound Christian influence? Whatever we may think of
+the clergy of to-day, with the more powerful clergy of yesterday we have
+a grave reckoning. The Rationalist is a new thing in Europe. The very
+name is little more than a century old, and until a few decades ago only
+a few thousand would accept it. Not from such a new and struggling
+movement do we ask why this military system has dominated Europe for
+ages and has only in recent times been seriously challenged. During
+those ages the Churches suffered none but themselves to pretend to a
+moral influence over the life of the nations, nor were there many bold
+and independent enough to make the claim. It is of the Churches we ask
+why this appalling system has taken such deep root in the life of Europe
+that it resists the most devoted efforts to eradicate it. It is not
+_this_ war, but war, that accuses the Churches. We are entangled in a
+system so widespread and so subtle that, when a war occurs, each nation
+can persuade itself that it is acting on just grounds. It is the system
+which interests us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
+
+
+The day will come when the student of human development will find war
+one of the most remarkable institutions that ever entered and quitted
+history. Civilisation took it over from barbarism; barbarism from the
+savage; the savage from the beast. So we are accustomed to argue, but we
+must make a singular reservation. The lowest peoples of the human
+family, which seem to represent primitive man, do not wage war, and are
+little addicted to violence. They seem by some process of natural
+selection to have obtained the social quality of peacefulness and mutual
+aid. There was, in a sense, a stage of primitive innocence. As, however,
+these primitive peoples grew in numbers and were organised in tribes, as
+they obtained collective possessions--flocks and pastures and hunting
+grounds--they came into collision with each other, and all the old
+pugnacity of the beast awoke. Skill, and even ferocity, in war became a
+valuable social quality, and we get the stage of the savage. The
+barbarian, or the man between savagery and civilisation, was still
+compelled to fight for his possessions. He was usually surrounded by
+fierce savage tribes. The civilised man in turn was surrounded by
+savages and barbarians, and needed to fight. So through thousands of
+years of development of moral sentiment and legal procedure the
+primitive method of the beast has been preserved.
+
+But I am not writing a history of warfare, and need not describe these
+stages more closely, or examine the new sentiment of imperialist
+expansion which gave civilisations a fresh incentive to develop methods
+of warfare. The point of interest is to determine at what stage it might
+have been possible for the moral element to intervene and bid the
+warriors, in the name of humanity, lay down their arms; at what stage
+the tribunal which men had set up to adjudicate between the quarrels of
+individuals might have been enlarged so as to be capable of arbitrating
+on the quarrels of nations.
+
+Now this was plainly impossible in the early centuries of the present
+era, and it is therefore foolish to ask why Pagan moralists did not do
+what we expect Christian moralists to have done. I have already
+mentioned, and have fully described elsewhere, how humanitarian
+sentiments were generally diffused throughout the old Græco-Roman world.
+There is not a phrase of the New Testament which has not a parallel
+among the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The great
+fusion of peoples in the Roman Empire begot a feeling of brotherhood,
+and, by a natural reaction on years of vice and violence, there was a
+considerable growth of lofty and tender, and often impracticable,
+sentiments. Moralists urged men to avoid anger, to bear blows with
+dignity, to greet all men as brothers, even to love their enemies. Plato
+and Epictetus and Plutarch and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius urged these
+maxims as forcibly as Christ did. The Stoic religion or philosophy,
+which guided Emperors and lawyers, and had a very wide influence in the
+Roman world, was intensely and quite modernly humanitarian. Its
+principal exponents condemned slavery and promoted a remarkable spread
+of philanthropy.
+
+It was, however, not possible for the Stoics to condemn war. Some of the
+more ardent and less practical humanitarians of the time did this, but
+no alert Roman citizen could advocate the abolition of the legions. The
+Empire was completely surrounded by barbarians who would rush in and
+trample on its civilisation the moment the fence of spears was removed.
+From the turreted walls in the north of England, where men watched the
+Picts and Scots, to the deserts of Mesopotamia--from the banks of the
+Danube and Rhine to the spurs of the Atlas--it was essential to maintain
+those bronzed legions who guarded the civilised provinces from
+marauders. With those outlying barbarians no treaty was possible or
+sacred; no legal tribunal would have protected those frontiers from the
+men who looked covetously on the fertile fields and comfortable cities
+of the Roman provinces. From the first to the fourth century Rome
+fought, not for its expansion, but for its preservation against these
+increasing enemies; and it was the final intensification of the pressure
+in the Danube region by the arrival of enormous hordes of barbarians
+from Asia which precipitated the final catastrophe. Paganism had never
+the slightest opportunity to abandon the military system, and only those
+who are totally unacquainted with Roman history can wonder why it did
+not make the attempt. It would have been a crime to abandon the
+civilised provinces to barbarism.
+
+This was the essential position of the Roman Empire: the civil wars of
+the fourth century, by which its military system was abused, need not
+be considered here. And the student of history must recognise with
+equal candour that the new Christianity, which succeeded Paganism in the
+fourth and fifth centuries, was equally powerless to abolish warfare.
+What we may justly blame is that the triumphant Christianity of the
+fourth century did not merely sanction the use of arms in defence of
+civilisation; it employed them in its own interest. The earlier
+Christians had exasperated the Romans by refusing to bear arms in the
+service of the Empire, plain as the need was. To a slight extent this
+was due to an aversion from the shedding of blood; for the most part
+military service was refused because it was saturated with Pagan rites.
+When the Empire became Christian, this objection was removed, and the
+Christians freely entered the army. Unhappily, the Christian body
+deteriorated with the new prosperity and base instincts were indulged.
+It is an undoubted historical fact, recorded by St. Jerome himself, that
+the election of Pope Damasus, his friend and benefactor, was accompanied
+by bloody and fatal riots. From undoubted historical sources we know
+that the Christian mob compelled the Prefect of Rome to fly from the
+city, and there is very serious evidence (in a document written by two
+Roman priests) that Damasus employed the swords and staves of his
+supporters to secure his position. Damasus and subsequent Popes then
+obtained or sanctioned the use of the Roman soldiers for the suppression
+of heresy and schism and Paganism, and Christianity was installed by
+violence throughout the Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire things were
+even worse. Violence became the customary device in the seething
+religious quarrels of the time, and, literally, tens of thousands lost
+their lives. The Byzantine or Greek Christianity entered upon a record
+of crime and violence which disgraced it for many centuries.
+
+This development did not augur well for the application of Christian
+principles to warfare. We may, however, observe at once that for many
+centuries the Roman Church had not the slightest chance of establishing
+peace in Europe. The destruction of the Roman Empire and disbanding of
+its armies made an entirely new situation in Italy. The Popes were, for
+the most part, good men, but they did not dream at that time of
+controlling the counsels of kings and dictating affairs of State. Even
+the story of Pope Leo the Great overawing the King of the Huns, Attila,
+and turning his army away from Italy, is a mere legend of medieval
+writers, and is at variance with the nearer authorities. The northern
+tribes themselves were to a great extent, and for some centuries, of the
+Arian faith, and took no advice from Rome. In a word, it would be stupid
+to expect Christian leaders of the early Middle Ages to press the cause
+of peace. The northern peoples, who would in time form the nations of
+Europe, were essentially violent and warlike, and would have recognised
+no pacific counsels in that imperfect stage of their religious
+development.
+
+Where the historian may and must censure the Church is in its adoption
+of militarism for its own purposes. Pope Gregory the Great found Italy
+in a chaotic and pitiful condition, and no doubt he acted, on the whole,
+rightly in organising its military defence. The more serious
+circumstance was that he began to receive immense estates, as gifts or
+legacies, in all parts of Italy as the property of the Roman Church, and
+from that time either a Papal army or the employment of the army of
+some friendly monarch was necessary in order to protect these estates.
+With the confirmation and consolidation of these estates into a kingdom
+under Charlemagne in the ninth century the Papacy completed its moral
+aberration. Most of the Popes were still men of good character, and they
+no doubt persuaded themselves that, since the income of these estates
+was needed for the fulfilment of their spiritual task, it was proper to
+defend them by the sword. But casuistry of this kind has never prospered
+indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal
+development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which
+rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence on Europe. The Papacy
+became a princedom to attract the covetous and the ambitious, and the
+line of Popes sank so low by the tenth century that the grossest
+characters were able to occupy the chair of Peter at a time when the
+nations of Europe were sufficiently advanced to be susceptible of a
+sincere moral influence. The record of the Papacy, from the ninth
+century to the nineteenth, contains on almost every page a bloody
+struggle for the temporal power. The most religious and most eminent of
+the Popes, such as Gregory VII and Innocent III, were the most prompt to
+set in motion the machinery of war in defence of their territories or in
+punishment of rebels against their authority. Not one of them was in a
+position to bid kings disband their armies, or ever dreamed of enjoining
+them to do more than observe a few days' truce or keep their swords from
+each other in order to save them for the common enemy of Christendom.
+
+It would be useless to speculate about the date when the new nations of
+Europe had become sufficiently civilised to hear a gospel of peace. The
+idea of superseding the military system of Europe by a juridical system
+occurred to no Christian leader, and therefore we need not consider what
+prospect it might have had of realisation. The Christian gospel of
+meekness had become a mockery: even the great abbeys, in which the
+gentler and more religious were supposed to be immured, had their
+troops, and abbots and bishops, and very often Papal Legates, appeared
+at the head of armies. Two Popes, John X and Julius II, marched
+themselves at the head of their troops. Cardinals had their suites of
+swordsmen, and the castles of the Roman aristocracy were at times strong
+fortifications from which war of the most ferocious and unscrupulous
+character was waged. Christendom was steeped in violence; only a gentle
+saint or bishop here and there caught a futile vision of a world of
+peace. Every man was armed against possible trouble with his neighbour;
+every noble had his retainers and kept them well exercised; every prince
+was free, as far as the spiritual authorities were concerned, to covet
+and bloodily exact the lands of his neighbour. The noble, of either sex,
+found supreme delight in jousts which the modern sentiment finds as
+inhuman as a sordid quarrel of _Apaches_ over a mistress; the peasants
+found a corresponding pleasure in the play of quarter-staves or the
+combats of dogs and cocks.
+
+It is, as I said, little use to speculate about the chances of a gospel
+of humanity in such a world. The overwhelming majority of priests and
+prelates made no effort whatever to restrain the prevailing violence.
+The elementary duty of any profound moral agency was to protest without
+ceasing, even if the protest was unavailing. It is not at all clear that
+it would have been unavailing. The power of the Popes was beyond that
+of any other hierarchy known to history, and at least the moral
+education of Europe would have proceeded less slowly, and war would have
+been abolished centuries ago, if there had been any serious, collective,
+and authoritative enforcement of Christian principles. There was not,
+and to this silence of the clergy during those long ages of their power
+we owe the maintenance in Europe to-day of the regime of violence. They
+were so far from enjoying moral inspiration in this respect that they
+were amongst the first to bless the banners and swell the coffers of an
+aggressive monarch, and they gave the military system a final
+consecration by employing it repeatedly in the interests of the Church.
+
+All that one can plead in mitigation of this deep historical censure of
+the medieval Church is that the frontiers of Christendom were for
+centuries threatened by the Turk and the Saracen. The old need of
+protecting civilisation by arms had almost disappeared. Few and feeble
+peoples remained outside the range of Christian civilisation after the
+tenth century. Armies were maintained only in the interest of criminal
+ambition or for the settlement of disputes which ought to have been
+submitted to judges. The menace of the Turk, with his hostile religion,
+was, of course, a just ground for armaments, but a few nations generally
+bore the whole brunt of his onset. Whatever religious feeling may make
+of the great Crusades, which drew to the east armies from all parts of
+Europe, secular history must dismiss them as appalling blunders. The few
+advantages they brought to European culture cannot seriously be weighed
+against the terrible sacrifice of lives and the even more terrible
+consecration of militarism. In a word, the menace of the Turk could
+have been met admirably by such an arrangement as we are advocating in
+Europe to-day: the maintenance of a small force by each nation for
+common action, under the direction of a supreme legal tribunal, against
+nations which would not obey the common law of peace. But we need not
+seriously discuss the influence of the Turk on the system. The last
+phases of the struggle, when the selfish nations and the ambitious
+Papacy spent their time in idle mutual recrimination and left the
+Hungarians and Poles to do all the work, justify us in dismissing that
+element. Kings and republics maintained armies for purely selfish
+purposes, for brutal aggression and defence against aggressors; and not
+a prelate in Europe had any moral repugnance to the system, or ventured
+to condemn it, especially as the Church used the same agency in defence
+of its own temporal interests.
+
+With the development of the Papal power and the advance of the peoples
+of Europe the opportunity of peace became greater, but the spiritual
+authority pledged itself more and more deeply to the military system.
+The Popes aspired--as Gregory VII and Innocent III repeatedly state--to
+control the temporal as well as the spiritual affairs of Europe, to
+transfer crowns when they thought fit, to direct invasions and military
+expeditions against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand
+boasts (_Ep._ vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask
+Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the
+Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its
+sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to
+bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal
+throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief
+for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two
+greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they
+carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement
+of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most
+militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set
+armies--even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe--in motion
+to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of
+deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions of
+neighbouring kings.
+
+The rise of heresy and of protests against the corruption of the Papacy
+was another very grave pretext of the Church to support the military
+system. In the days of Gregory VII a body of Puritans known as the
+Patareni spread over the north of Italy, and Rome encouraged a few
+soldiers to lead armed mobs against them and drown their idealism in
+blood. Innocent III has a more terrible stigma on his record. The
+Albigensians, an early type of Protestants, were spreading in the south
+of France, and the Pope sanctioned a "crusade"--an expedition, largely,
+of looters and cut-throats--against them from all parts of France. The
+appalling deceit practised by the Papal Legate and sanctioned by the
+Pope, the ferocity of the campaign, and the desolation brought on one of
+the happiest and most prosperous provinces of France, may be read in any
+history of the thirteenth century. Tens of thousands of men, women, and
+children were savagely put to death. And this was only the beginning of
+the Papal war on heresy, which from the thirteenth century never ceased
+to spring up in Europe until it won its right of citizenship in the
+Reformation. Even more vehemently was war urged against the Moors, then
+the most civilised people in Europe.
+
+In face of this notorious history of Europe during the long course of
+the Middle Ages it is now usual for Catholic apologists to plead that
+the blood of the barbarian still flowed in the veins of the Christian
+nations and men were not yet prepared to listen to the message of peace.
+This plea cannot for a moment be admitted in extenuation of the Church's
+guilt. The clergy had themselves no conception of the criminality of
+war, and did not rise above the moral level of their age. Here and there
+a saint or a prelate raised a feeble voice against the violence of men,
+but we do not estimate an institution by the words of an occasional
+member, especially if they are at variance with the official conduct and
+the general sentiment. On the other hand, to boast that the clergy at
+times enforced a temporary cessation of fighting (the "Truce of God")
+only increases our appreciation of their guilt. The men who enforced
+that Truce gave proof at once of their power and of their perception of
+the un-Christian nature of warfare. But they were unwilling to condemn
+outright a machinery which they might employ at any moment in defence or
+advancement of their own interests. Had the Church been a serious moral
+influence in Europe, had it been true to the message in virtue of which
+it had grown rich and powerful, it would have protested unceasingly
+against this reign of violence. It was not a great moral influence. The
+grossness and illiteracy of the people, the appalling immorality of the
+clergy and monks and nuns, and this almost entire failure to apply
+Christian or ordinary human principles to the worst feature of the life
+of Europe, are terrible offsets to the little good it achieved. Europe
+was steadily educated and encouraged, century after century, in the
+shedding of blood.
+
+The Protestant is at times disposed to dismiss the whole sordid story
+with the remark that this Roman Church was not Christianity at all. He
+contrives to overlook the serious difficulty that, if the Roman Church
+did not represent Christianity from the sixth century to the sixteenth,
+there was, contrary to the promise of Christ, no Christianity in Europe
+for a thousand years; and he surrenders all the wonderful art of the
+Middle Ages (as he ought) to entirely non-Christian forces. That,
+however, does not concern me here. The slightest recollection of history
+would warn the Protestant that the Reformation brought no improvement
+whatever, as far as this reign of violence is concerned. The forces set
+up by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation fought each other for
+some decades with the comparatively peaceful weapons of mutual abuse and
+heated argument. When it was perceived that these weapons were of no
+avail, there was the customary appeal to the sword. In the historical
+documents which tell the life of Pope Paul IV we see the Papacy and the
+Jesuits urging the Catholic princes to lead out their armies. Heresy was
+to be extinguished in blood; and, seeing how many millions in the north
+had by that time embraced the heresy, there can have been no illusion as
+to the magnitude of the oceans of blood that would be required to drown
+it. So Europe entered upon the horrors of the Thirty Years' War
+(1618-1648), which put back the civilisation of Germany for more than a
+hundred years and utterly ruined some of the small principalities. The
+population of Bohemia alone fell from three millions to less than a
+million. Nearly every nation in Europe was involved, and the war was
+conducted with all the brutality of the older medieval warfare.
+
+The fact that political as well as religious ambitions were engaged in
+the Thirty Years' War does not affect my argument. In so far as
+religious sentiment was responsible--and it will hardly be questioned
+that it had a large share in the Thirty Years' War--we find a fresh
+consecration by Christianity itself of the use of the sword. But the
+main point we have to consider is that the new spiritual authorities
+were no more inclined than the old to declare that warfare was opposed
+to Christian principles. The last three centuries have been as full of
+aggressive war as the three centuries which preceded, but there was no
+protest by Christian ministers either in Protestant England and
+Scandinavia or in Catholic France and Austria. It was the period when
+the modern Powers of Europe were building up their vast dominions, and
+no one who is acquainted with the story can have any illusion as to the
+application to that process of what are now described as clear Christian
+principles.
+
+This is precisely the plaint of modern Germany. We seek, they say, to do
+merely what England and France--it were indiscreet to mention
+Austria--did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were
+vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their
+civilisation over backward lands. They appealed solely to the right of
+the sword, and all the Christian authorities in Europe--the bishops of
+William and of Anne, the bishops of Louis XIV, the bishops of Peter the
+Great--had not a single syllable to say against the right of the sword.
+The various branches of the Christian Church were at that time
+singularly unanimous in accommodating their principles to imperialist
+and aggressive warfare. Now that you have obtained all that you
+need--the aggrieved Teuton says--now that I in turn would expand and
+colonise, you discover that this imperialist aggression is supremely
+opposed to Christian principles.
+
+On some such meditations, in part, the German bases his conviction of
+the hypocrisy and perfidy of the English character. He is, of course,
+entirely wrong. A real change has taken place in the moral sentiment of
+this country; a change so real that when, in South Africa, the nation
+entered upon a war which many regarded as aggressive and merely
+acquisitive, there was a very widespread revolt. The cynic might
+genially observe that it is not difficult to retire from evil-doing and
+cultivate lofty principles when your fortune has been made, but it is
+important to realise this change and understand its significance. There
+is, no doubt, a sound human element in the cynic's observation. It _is_
+easier to recognise moral principle when the period of temptation is
+over. Every thoughtful and humane Englishman will make allowance for the
+less fortunate position of Germany, and not foolishly pride himself on
+his own superiority of character. The fact remains, however, that there
+has been a real moral improvement in England and France, and it would
+now be impossible for those nations to enter upon the aggressive and
+nakedly ambitious wars which they were accustomed to undertake before
+the nineteenth century. We have a genuine abhorrence of the "lust for
+land" which has impelled Germany to plunge Europe into war. But until a
+century or two ago that lust for land was considered a legitimate
+appetite in Europe, and the clergy crowded with the people to greet the
+warriors who came home with the news that they had added, by the sword,
+one more province to our spreading Empire.
+
+That this change of heart is not merely a feeling that we have no
+further need of aggression, and would ourselves suffer by the aggression
+of others, could easily be proved, if it were necessary. In the same
+period of change we abolished the duel, and there was no material
+advantage in discovering the immorality of the duel. We abolished
+dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and other brutalising
+spectacles. We undertook a reform of our industrial and penal systems
+which, however imperfect it be, was very considerable in itself, and was
+inspired solely by motives of humanity. There was a general and marked
+improvement of public sentiment, and it is as part of this improvement
+that we now find a universal condemnation of aggressive war and a
+widespread demand for the entire abolition of war. The construction of
+English history and English character on the lines of Mr. G. B. Shaw may
+be entertaining, and may save considerable trouble of research, but it
+does not conduce to sound judgment. The laments of social pessimists and
+of certain religious controversialists are never supported by accurate
+knowledge. Every social historian who gives evidence of knowing the
+evils of the England of a century ago as well as the England of to-day
+admits that there has been a great moral advance.
+
+I will examine in the next chapter certain comments of religious writers
+and speakers on this advance. Here I wish to determine the facts with
+some clearness. It has not been necessary for me to discuss the medieval
+and the early modern period with any fullness. There is no dispute about
+the features of those periods. They were ages of violence, of incessant
+and frankly aggressive war, of unrestrained ambition. The smallest
+pretext sufficed for a monarch, if his forces and finances were in
+order, to invade his neighbour's territory and annex as much of it as
+he could hold by the sword. Frederic the Great and Napoleon did not
+introduce new ideas into Europe; they attempted to revive medieval ideas
+in a changing world. Austria in its annexation of Bosnia and
+Herzegovina, Germany in its ambition to annex Belgium and the colonies
+which other Powers have laboriously cultivated, are following their
+example. They are not inventing new forms of criminality; they are not
+returning to Pagan ideals: they are reverting merely to ideals which
+were accepted throughout Europe for more than a thousand years. In the
+more brutal features of war to which they have descended they are even
+more emphatically reverting to the Middle Ages. The Romans did not
+commit such outrages at the command of educated officers. Medieval
+Christians did: the record of Papal warfare, down to the "Massacre of
+Perugia" in 1859, is as deeply stained as any by these abominable
+methods.
+
+My further point, that the Christian Church or Churches made no serious
+resistance to the prevailing brutality, is just as easy to establish. It
+is a sheer travesty of argument to put forward the gentle exhortations
+of a Francis of Assisi as characteristic of the Christian Church when
+the Pope of the time, one of the most powerful and conscientious Popes
+of all time, Innocent III, was threatening or directing the movements of
+ferocious armies all over Europe. Most assuredly there were among the
+numbers of fine characters who appeared in Christendom in the course of
+a thousand years many who deeply resented the prevailing violence. But
+when we speak of the Church, we speak of its official action and its
+predominant sentiment. The official action of the Popes was, during all
+that period, to make the same use as any terrestrial monarch of the
+service of soldiers; they failed, from Gregory the Great to Pius X, to
+recognise one of the supreme moral needs of Europe. The bishops of the
+Church of England and the heads of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches
+did not prove to have any sounder moral inspiration in this respect. It
+was left to despised bodies like the Friends, who were hardly recognised
+as Christians, and to rare individuals to protest against the system
+which has brought such appalling evil on Europe.
+
+In the nineteenth century the moral sentiment of Europe began to advance
+more rapidly than it had previously done, and the idea of substituting
+arbitration for war began to spread. The history of this reform has not
+yet been written, as far as I can discover, but it is hardly likely that
+any will be bold enough to suggest that the idea was due to
+Christianity. After the Napoleonic wars, at least, Europe was ripe for
+such a reform. I do not mean that public feeling in Europe was prepared
+for the idea. It would have met with a very considerable degree of
+resistance, and would have generally been conceived as the dream of an
+amiable fanatic. Such resistance makes the duty of the moralist or the
+reformer all the more pressing, and it is merely amazing to hear the
+earlier Christian clergy exonerated on the ground that the world was not
+prepared to receive a message of peace from them. They did not try the
+experiment because it did not occur to them, or because they were too
+closely dependent on the monarchs of the earth to question the wisdom of
+their arrangements. Europe was, in point of fact, quite ripe for the
+change in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and there would
+assuredly be no war to-day if the Churches had had the moral inspiration
+and the moral courage to insist on it. The frontiers of the nations were
+(except in the case of Italy and Poland) defined with a fair show of
+justice, and the time had come to disband armies and submit any future
+quarrel to arbitration: to retain only a small standing army in each
+country for the defence of its colonial frontiers against tribes which
+do not respect arbitration, or for the enforcement of the decisions of
+the central tribunal. The conditions were almost as favourable for such
+a change in 1816 as they are to-day, or will be in 1916, and it is
+another grave point in the indictment of Christianity that it had no
+inspiration to demand that change. The bishops of England no less than
+the bishops of Rome were deeply concerned about the rise of democracy
+and the spread of unbelief, and they joined with the monarchs in
+enforcing a system of violent repression. For the larger and more real
+need of Europe they had no feeling whatever, and militarism entered upon
+its last and most terrible phase: the stage of national armies and of
+means of destruction prepared with all the fearful skill of modern
+science.
+
+As the nineteenth century proceeded, humanitarianism attained clearer
+conceptions and more articulate speech. The scheme of substituting legal
+procedure for military violence was definitely put before the world. It
+is not necessary, and would be difficult, to trace the earliest
+developments of this idea. On the one hand, I find no claim that it was
+put forward by representatives of Christianity; on the other hand,
+literary research among the records of the early Rationalist movements
+in this country has shown me that the idea was familiar and welcome
+amongst them. No doubt the aversion of the Friends from bloodshed had
+some influence, and we find representatives of that noble-minded Society
+active in more than one of the early reform-movements. But, as far as I
+can discover, it was Robert Owen who first definitely advanced the idea
+of substituting arbitration for war, and it was repeatedly discussed
+among the "Rational Religion" Societies--which were not at all
+religious--that he founded or inspired in various parts of the country.
+The immense influence which he obtained in the thirties and forties
+enabled him to direct public attention to the reform.
+
+This early history is, however, as yet vague and unstudied, nor do we
+need to enter into any ungenerous struggle about priority. It is enough
+that the idealist scheme was well known in England long before the
+middle of the nineteenth century. Did the Christian Churches adopt and
+enforce it? Here, at least, no minute research is needed. The Christian
+bodies failed lamentably and totally (apart from the heterodox Friends)
+even to recognise the moral and humane greatness of the idea when it was
+definitely presented to them. It is only in the last few years that a
+Peace Sunday has--at the suggestion of lay associations--been adopted in
+the churches and chapels of England. It is only in quite recent times
+that bishops and ministers have stood on peace-platforms and advocated
+the reform. And even to-day, when peace associations founded by laymen
+have been endeavouring for decades to educate the country, no branch of
+the Christian Church has officially and collectively decreed that
+Christian principles enjoin the reform; no Pope or Archbishop or Church
+Council has supported it with a stern and official injunction that
+Christian and moral principle demands that all the members of the
+particular Church shall subscribe to and work for the reform. Even at
+this eleventh hour, when the issue of peace or war confronts the whole
+of mankind, one notices hesitation, reserve, ambiguity. During the
+fateful years between 1900 and 1914, when the nations were, in the eyes
+of all, preparing the most appalling armaments ever known in history,
+when men were speaking freely all over Europe of "the next war" and the
+terrific dimensions which modern science and modern alliances would give
+to it, the various branches of the Christian Church adhered to their
+ancient and futile practice of preaching general principles (as far as
+national conduct is concerned), and had little practical influence on
+the development.
+
+I am not unaware of the small movements among the clergy for cultivating
+international clerical friendship, or of the extent to which individual
+clergymen have co-operated in the various arbitration movements. That is
+only a feeble discharge of a small part of their duty. Had Leo XIII or
+Pius X issued a plain and explicit Encyclical on the subject, and
+directed his vast international organisation of clergy to labour
+wholeheartedly for its realisation, who can estimate what the result
+would have been? Had the clergy of Germany issued a stern and collective
+denunciation of the Pan-German and Imperialist literature which was
+instilling poison into every village of the country, can we suppose that
+it would have been without avail? Had the Archbishops and Bishops of
+England, and the leaders of the Free Churches, definitely instructed
+their people that the pacifist ideal was not merely in accord with
+Christian principles, but was one of the most urgent and beneficent
+reforms of our time, would the English people have passed as
+inobservantly as it did through the five years of preparation for a
+great war?
+
+It is no part of my plan to analyse this deplorable failure of the
+Churches as moral agencies. The explanation would be complex, and is now
+superfluous. The clergy were, like the majority of their fellows,
+obsessed by the military system and unable to realise the possibility of
+a change. In part they were deluded by the catch-words of superficial
+literature. They had an idea that we were asking England to lower its
+armament while the rest of the world increased its armament. They
+muttered that "the time was not ripe," not realising that it was their
+business to make it ripe. They had been accustomed for ages to preaching
+a purely individualist morality, and they felt ill at ease in the larger
+social applications of moral principle which our age regards as more
+important. They feared to offend military supporters, and did not
+realise that one may entirely honour the soldier as long as the military
+system lasts, yet resent the system. They felt that this new movement
+was suspiciously hailed by Socialists, and that to denounce armies had
+an air of politics about it. They were peculiarly wedded to tradition,
+on account of the very nature they claimed for their traditions, and
+they instinctively felt that to denounce war would be to attempt to
+improve, not merely on their predecessors, but on the Old and the New
+Testaments. They solaced themselves with the thought that unnecessary
+violence was condemned in their general teaching, and that, if it
+eventually transpired that war was unnecessary, they could point out
+once more the all-embracing character of the Christian ethic. In fine,
+they were for the greater part, like the greater part of their fellows,
+mentally indolent and indisposed to think out or fight for a new idea.
+
+Whatever the explanation, the fact remains. By the tenth century
+Christianity was fully organised, and all the peoples of Europe were
+Christian; by the thirteenth century the power of the Church was
+enormous and the nations of Europe were settled and civilised. But
+neither then nor at any later period did Christianity perceive the crime
+and stupidity of the prevailing system. The perception is even now only
+faint and partial. It is this long toleration of the military system,
+the thousand-year silence on what is now acclaimed as one of the
+greatest applications of Christian principle, that one finds it
+difficult or impossible to forgive. The zeal of some of the modern
+clergy is open to a certain not unnatural suspicion: in view of their
+shrinking authority and the growing indifference of the world to dogma
+and ritual, they have been forced to take up these new and larger ideas
+of our time.
+
+Even if one lays aside that suspicion, and in many cases it is quite
+unjust, the clergy must realise that the indictment of Christianity is
+grave, and is almost unatonable. Those thousand years of conflict,
+during which they sanctioned every variety of war and initiated many
+wars in their own interest, have given the military system such root in
+the hearts of men that it will require a supreme and prolonged effort to
+destroy it. The proverbial visitor from Mars would not be so much amazed
+at any feature of our life as at this retention amid a great
+civilisation of the barbaric method of settling international
+differences. He would ask in astonishment how an intelligent and
+generally humane race, a race which raises homes for stray cats and aged
+horses, could cling to a system which, on infallible experience, plunges
+one or more countries in the deepest suffering every few years. He would
+learn that there has not been a war in Europe for a hundred years the
+initial cause of which would not have been better appreciated and
+adjudicated on by a body of impartial lawyers; and that, if the quarrels
+had thus been submitted to arbitration, we should have saved (including
+the annual military expenditure and the cost of the present war) some
+three million lives and more than £15,000,000,000--since the end of the
+Napoleonic wars. In answer to the amazement of this imaginary critic, we
+could reply only that Europe has grown to regard the military system as
+so permanent and unquestioned an institution of our civilisation that it
+simply cannot imagine the abolition of that system.
+
+For this incapacity, this widespread inertia, this blundering idea that
+there is some serious intrinsic difficulty in the matter, the Churches
+are responsible. If they had directed to war the smallest particle of
+the ardent rhetoric they have poured on disbelief in dogmas which they
+are to-day abandoning, the public mind would have awakened long ago.
+There is no intrinsic difficulty in substituting arbitration for war.
+There are technical difficulties which the great lawyers and statesmen
+of the peace-movement have given ample promise of surmounting, but the
+overwhelming obstacle is merely this--the peoples of Europe do not
+insist on the reform. Of all the large problems which confront the
+modern mind this is incomparably the simplest. We are hopelessly divided
+as to the nature of the remedy for most of our social ills. Here the
+remedy is acknowledged: the plan has been elaborated almost in entirety:
+the international tribunal already exists, and awaits only its
+executive, which the nations of Europe could supply to-morrow. It is the
+will, the demand, that is wanting. For that lack we charge the utter
+failure of the Churches during the ages of their power to enunciate a
+plain moral lesson, and their positive encouragement of an evil system.
+That is the real indictment. It affects the Christian Church in every
+nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY
+
+
+Any person who cares to read the reports of the utterances of our clergy
+in the current religious periodicals will recognise that they are
+painfully conscious of the reproach which this war implies. One
+constantly finds them repeating that in this year of tragedy
+"Christianity has failed" and "the gospel has broken in our hands." It
+had been their boast that Christianity had civilised Europe, and none of
+them has the audacity or indecency to claim, as some writers have done,
+that such a war is in harmony with the principles and ideals of
+civilisation. They have preached brotherhood and peace, and the greater
+part of Christendom is engaged in a strife of the most terrible nature.
+It is not a struggle of Christian and infidel; it is a struggle of
+Christian and Christian, and one or several of the Christian nations
+involved are guilty of a crime greater in magnitude than all the murders
+in Europe during a decade. Above all patriotism, above all immediate
+anxiety, above all argumentation about responsibility, this grim fact
+stands out and reproaches them: after fifteen hundred years of Christian
+preaching Europe is locked in the bloodiest struggle of all time.
+
+During the last fifty or hundred years the clergy have developed some
+expertness in making apologies. They have lived in a world of anxious
+questions and heated charges, and a special department called
+Apologetics has been added to theology. They are, it is true, sorely
+perplexed, divided in counsel, uneasy as to their procedure. Some would
+ignore the pertinacious outsider and persuade their followers that he is
+negligible; others would sustain an energetic campaign against him. Some
+would openly and candidly meet the questions of their followers; others
+would prefer not to unsettle the large number who never ask questions.
+At the present juncture it is impossible to be wholly silent. Some of
+the clergy, it seems--I learn this from the recorded words of eminent
+preachers--wish to ignore the war and go on with their business as
+usual. But the majority feel that such a procedure is dangerous. This
+violent breach of Christian principles by Christian nations requires
+some explanation. Where is the long-boasted moral influence of
+Christianity? Where is the all-loving ruler of the universe? Let us
+examine some of the apologies of the preachers.
+
+Let me confess that, from a long experience of this apologetic branch of
+theology, I am not surprised to find that not a single speaker or
+writer--as far as my reading of their utterances goes--fairly meets the
+main difficulty. Most of them, naturally, are content to plead that the
+war has been forced on Europe by Germany, and that therefore no
+responsibility lies on Christianity as a whole for the tragedy and the
+moral failure it involves. A large number of them go even farther. They
+point to the heroic sacrifices made in defence of an ideal by France,
+Belgium, England, and Russia--the millions of men streaming to the
+battle-field, the millions of women bravely enduring the suspense and
+the loss, the millions who generously open their purses to every
+philanthropic enterprise--and they acclaim this as a triumph of
+Christian civilisation. As to the failure of Christianity in Germany to
+stand the test, they either point superficially to the growth of
+Rationalism, Biblical Criticism, and Socialism in that country, or they
+take refuge in the confusions of the extreme pacifists and refuse to
+assign responsibility at all, or they persuade themselves that a small
+minority of men who were not Christians deluded the German people into
+consenting to the war. In any case, they insist that Christianity as a
+whole is not impeached. Assume that Austria was dragged into the war by
+Germany, and you have four Christian nations--five, if one includes
+Serbia--behaving with great gallantry and entire propriety, and only one
+Christian nation misbehaving.
+
+There is no doubt that this is the common religious attitude, but it
+does not satisfy some of the more thoughtful and earnest preachers. This
+optimism seems to them rebuked by the very fact that Christendom is in a
+state of war to which Paganism can offer no parallel. They think of the
+lands beyond the sea to which they have been sending the Christian
+message of peace and brotherhood. They fancy they see China and Japan
+smiling their faint but distressing smile at the situation in Christian
+Europe. They have assured all these distant peoples that their faith has
+built up a shining civilisation in Europe, and now there flash and
+quiver through the nerves of the world the daily messages of horror, of
+fierce hatred, of appalling carnage, of the wanton destruction by
+Christians of Christian temples. The Gospel has, somehow, broken down in
+Europe, they regretfully admit.
+
+But they never go beyond this vague admission and boldly state the sin
+of the Churches. One would imagine that, in spite of its obvious and
+lamentable failure, they still thought that their predecessors had been
+justified in preaching only the general terms of the Christian gospel
+and never applying it to war. One would fancy that they are so
+unacquainted with history as to suppose that during the long ages of the
+past the Churches were really frowning on violence and warfare, instead
+of blessing and employing it. They fear to draw out in its full
+proportion the inefficacy (because of its vagueness) of the gospel and
+the long perversion of its ministers. Yet we cannot evade this
+fundamental fact of the situation, that this particular war is an
+outcome of a general military system, and the Churches have a very grave
+responsibility for the maintenance of that system until the twentieth
+century. We all know how the technical moral theologian of recent times
+has glossed the complacency of his Church. He has drawn a distinction
+between offensive and defensive war, and, since the latter is obviously
+just, he has maintained that armies are rightly raised to wage it when
+necessary. On this petty fallacy the Churches have so long reconciled
+themselves to militarism, and have, in fact, been amongst its closest
+allies. The clergy did not, or would not, see that the retention of the
+military system was in itself the surest provocation of offensive war;
+that ambition or covetousness could almost always find a moral pretext
+for aggression, and that there have been comparatively few priests in
+the history of Europe who ever stood out and unmasked the hypocrisy of
+such monarchs. As long as the military system lasted, it was certain
+that wars would take place, yet they never denounced the system. The
+great conception of substituting justice for violence, law for
+lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the
+secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.
+
+For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have
+to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a
+unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its
+engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, assuredly, the
+Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique
+also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for
+that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the
+intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general
+culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in
+defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be
+connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and
+approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled,
+and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.
+
+But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to
+say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile
+their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure,
+to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this
+trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival
+which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few
+of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons
+of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more
+distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading
+religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these
+pronouncements and fail to realise that our generation acts not
+unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the
+clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern
+intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered
+and confusing emotions of the hour.
+
+One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from
+Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the
+Commonwealth and does assuredly express what multitudes of preachers are
+saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop
+Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his
+followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the
+Melbourne _Age_ (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had "very
+strong ideas about the war" (I quote the words of the _Age_), and "did
+not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some
+king or emperor." He believed that "the great God who provided for all
+human creatures, through the war was punishing sin that had prevailed
+for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity." The
+Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes
+as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises
+his conclusion:
+
+     "The reason that God was using the present war for the punishment
+     of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been
+     not merely neglect of the worship and service of God, which had
+     always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising
+     of human light and human understanding and human will against the
+     existence of the providence of God. It was not so common among us
+     here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in
+     which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural
+     faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think
+     they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of
+     their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such
+     men."
+
+Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical
+culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like
+him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their
+Church in our great and promising Commonwealth is not clear. In the
+course of this important sermon, in which he is delivering his very
+personal and mature conclusions on the greatest issue of the hour, the
+Archbishop observed that "the Roman Empire had been attacked by Attila"
+and "Attila scourged the Romans for the crimes of which they had for a
+long while been guilty." One is surprised that he did not add the pretty
+legend of the awe-stricken Hun retreating before the majestic figure of
+Pope Leo I. However, most of us are aware that, as a student in any
+college of Australia ought to be able to inform the Archbishop, Attila
+never reached within two hundred miles of Rome, and that the Pagan
+Romans, whom the Archbishop obviously has in mind, had been extinguished
+long before the monarch of the Huns was born. There is no greater
+historical scholarship in the other proofs which the prelate brings in
+support of his thesis that war is often deliberately sent as a
+punishment.
+
+But what are we to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of
+the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is
+based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval
+torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise,
+tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds
+they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of
+describing a refusal to assent to the doctrine of hell and heaven as a
+wilful rebellion of passion against the restraining influences of
+Christianity is going out of fashion. Christian people were meeting too
+many heretics in the flesh, and did not recognise the thing described
+from the pulpit. The sturdy Archbishop will have none of this pampering.
+Unbelief is a matter of the will as well as the understanding. And he
+actually believes that God guided the thoughts of William II in
+engineering this war--believes it for a reason a hundred times worse
+than the Kaiser's idea. He believes that God sent on Europe a war that
+will cost £10,000,000,000, that is blasting the homes and embittering
+the hearts of millions, that mingles the innocent and guilty in one
+common and fearful desolation, that sends millions to a premature death
+amidst circumstances which do not lend themselves to a devout
+preparation, that is raising storms of hatred and perverting the souls
+of millions, because a few other millions refuse to go to church. It
+would be difficult to conceive a cruder and more barbarous idea. Attila
+did not scourge the Romans, but he did scourge other peoples; and we
+hold him up to execration for ever for it. But Archbishop Carr, and many
+other preachers, think that an all-holy and all-intelligent God can do
+infinitely worse than Attila. He is going to punish the unbelievers in
+eternal fire when they die: meantime he will make a hell on earth for
+the innocent as well as the supposed guilty, the child and the mother as
+well as the free-thinking father. Of a truth, it is not surprising that
+a reluctance to listen to sermons has spread to Melbourne, and that men
+are wondering whether they had better not take in hand their own
+destinies rather than entrust them to such spiritual guides as this.
+
+Note, particularly, in passing the emphasis which the Archbishop puts on
+the determination of our generation to control its own destinies. Until
+the nineteenth century men entrusted their destinies, on the moral side,
+to guides like Archbishop Carr. I have described the result. In the
+nineteenth century there began this practice, which the Archbishop
+thinks worthy of so inhuman a chastisement, of men attending to their
+own moral interests. Of this also I have described the result. The moral
+sentiment of Europe has greatly improved, and there is at least a
+widespread revolt against warfare and a prospect of abolishing it. For
+this God, the more than human, scorched Europe with the horrible flames
+which Archbishop Carr thinks he keeps in his arsenal of
+torture-implements. The Archbishop says that infidelity has not spread
+so much in Australia. I should, if I were not well acquainted with the
+Commonwealth, be disposed to see in that the reason why eminent prelates
+can still utter such gross medieval nonsense in that country.
+
+In England this particularly crude type of nonsense is not usually
+uttered by preachers of distinction,[2] though it is common enough among
+less responsible preachers; but there is a dangerous approach to it in
+some of the sermons which the religious periodicals regard as
+important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I
+notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are,
+in harmony with his test, described as "the vultures of God." Germany,
+it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor
+Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his
+words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the action of God in the
+military conduct of the Allies, and to that extent he is hardly less
+revolting, in view of his culture, than the archbishop. Could the God of
+Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to
+sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent
+along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?
+
+More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent
+National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist
+preachers, the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the
+Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this
+gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it
+and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the
+speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in
+the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking
+question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest
+efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of
+the Churches.
+
+Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe,
+gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to "the
+failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity." He conceived it as
+"God's judgment upon the Church's failure seriously to devote herself
+to the great cause of peace on earth and good-will among men." With all
+their boasts of what Christianity had done in Europe, it now appeared
+that that civilisation was raised upon "foundations of sand." The
+preacher claimed that much was being done in modern times by the clergy
+to promote international amity, but he seemed to feel that it was little
+and was _very_ recent. The spectacle unfolded before us in Europe to-day
+is a sufficient proof of its inadequacy. And, as Mr. Rushbrooke said, we
+now see how little use it is to preach ideals at home and not apply them
+to the common life of the world.
+
+These words are the nearest to wisdom that I have found among a large
+collection of pulpit-utterances and religious articles. The preacher
+plainly sees, and with some measure of candour confesses, that long
+remissness of Christian ministers in applying their principles to which
+the war, and all wars, are fundamentally due. The record which he
+carefully makes of recent efforts to redeem the failure is paltry in
+comparison with the resources even of the Free Churches, and only serves
+to bring out more clearly the awful neglect of Christian ministers
+during the long ages when they had a mighty power in Europe. But Mr.
+Rushbrooke makes one grave error. He feels that not merely the relation
+of the war to Christianity, but its relation to God, is engaging public
+attention, and he stumbles into the theory that God sent the war. It is
+"God's judgment on the Church's failure." We must suppose that Mr.
+Rushbrooke did not literally mean what he said. His words imply a theory
+of the war more monstrous even than that of Archbishop Carr. To punish
+Europe for the sins of unbelievers has at least a genuine medieval
+plausibility about it; but to send this indescribable plague on the
+nations of Europe because the clergy failed to do their duty.... One
+must really assume that Mr. Rushbrooke did not mean what he said, and
+leave the sentence unfinished. What he meant it is impossible to
+conjecture. To the religious mind "God's judgment" means a chastisement
+sent by God. But, whatever Mr. Rushbrooke meant, he had been wiser to
+leave the idea of God out of his comments on this war, and to say
+frankly that it would bring on them and on their predecessors, on the
+whole of Christianity, the judgment of man and the judgment of history
+for their neglect of their opportunities.
+
+The Rev. A. T. Guttery addressed the Council in a more cheerful mood,
+and his reflections are characteristic of a large group of the clergy.
+He would not for a moment allow the failure of Christianity. The
+Churches had, he said, been so successful in compelling the world to
+recognise the evil of aggressive warfare that even the Germans were
+eager to describe their action as purely defensive. "The Pagan glory of
+war for its own sake was gone." And when we acknowledge the comparative
+failure of religion in Germany, and restrict our attention to the sphere
+of our own clergy, we find that they have created an entirely new
+spirit. The lust for territory and for gold is felt no more in England.
+Here there is no mafficking over victories, there are no hymns of hate.
+The British nation has been sobered by the influence of Christianity. We
+may regret that the German people has not proved equally susceptible,
+and its pastors equally energetic, but we cannot bear their burden.
+Their naughtiness alone has disturbed the moral progress which, even in
+this department, Christianity was fostering.
+
+This is, I think, a very usual attitude of the clergy, and I have
+already appreciated the sound element of it. There is no comparison
+between the behaviour of the two nations. Whether England deserves quite
+all the compliments which Mr. Guttery showers upon it may be a matter of
+opinion. We have as yet little cause for "mafficking," but there is very
+little doubt that it will occur on a grandiose scale before the war is
+over. We do not sing hymns of hate; but it might be hazardous to
+speculate what we would do if some nation drew an iron ring round our
+country and reduced us almost to a condition of starvation. We have no
+lust for territory--I am not sure about the lust for gold--because we
+have in our Empire territory enough for our population; and we may wait
+to see if England does not annex any part of Germany's African or
+Pacific possessions. Mr. Guttery's contrast is crude and superficial. He
+ignores the economic and geographical conditions which give us a feeling
+of content and Germany a profound feeling of discontent and a dangerous
+ambition. The German character is not in itself inferior to ours, and it
+were well for us to fancy ourselves in Germany's position and wonder if
+we would have acted otherwise.
+
+On the other hand, I have freely acknowledged, or claimed, that there
+has been a great improvement in the moral temper of Europe, and that
+this is especially seen in the odium that is now cast on aggressive or
+offensive war. But to claim this improvement for the credit of religion
+is, to say the least, audacious. The more simple-minded of Mr. Guttery's
+hearers would imagine that the change set in with the fall of Paganism.
+"The Pagan glory of war for its own sake is gone." When clerical writers
+speak of Paganism they think that any evil deed ever done by a Pagan is
+characteristic of the whole body; they ask us to apply a different
+standard to their own body. Plato and Socrates were Pagans; Marcus
+Aurelius and Antoninus Pius--to speak of warriors and statesmen--were
+Pagans. The truth is that a glory in war for its own sake was no more
+generally characteristic of Paganism than it was of Christian Europe
+until a century ago: it was probably less. Most of the German Emperors
+and of the Kings of England, France, and Spain would fairly come under
+the description which Mr. Guttery calls Pagan. One hardly needs to know
+much of history to perceive that this moral improvement in the
+conception of war belongs to the last century and a half, and it is
+somewhat bold to claim that a change which made no appearance during a
+thousand years of profound Christian influence, and did begin to appear
+and make progress as that faith waned, can be claimed for Christianity.
+I do not forget that the theologian began long ago, in the seclusion of
+his cell or study, to condemn offensive warfare. But there have been
+hundreds of offensive wars waged by Christian monarchs since that date,
+and we do not read of any instance in which the clergy failed to endorse
+the thin casuistry by which the offensive was turned into a defensive or
+a preventive war, or refused to sanction an entire neglect of the
+principle.
+
+Dr. Scott-Lidgett followed on somewhat similar lines. The whole trouble,
+he protested, was due to an anti-Christian, illiberal, and inhuman
+system. It seems that he was referring to Prussia, and it is regrettable
+that he did not feel called to explain why that system prevails in the
+year of the Lord 1915, or how it finds an instrument of its ambition in
+a militarism that ought to have been denounced and abolished centuries
+ago. Mr. Shakespeare, another distinguished Nonconformist, follows the
+same facile course--casts all the responsibility on Germany--and equally
+fails to explain how Germany came to find the machinery of destruction
+at its hand in our age.
+
+In fine, Dean Welldon, one of the most energetic spokesmen of the Church
+of England, addressed this Free Church Council, and imparted an element
+of originality. He used the inconclusive and dangerous argument of _tu
+quoque_. If, he said, you claim that this war exhibits the failure of
+Christianity, you must admit that it shows equally the failure of
+science and civilisation. Nay, he says, growing bolder, if your
+contention is true, Christianity has done no more than supply the
+instrument of its own destruction, but science and civilisation have
+brought us back to savagery.
+
+It is, of course, difficult to follow a man's rounded thought in the
+crabbed phrases of an abbreviating reporter, but it is plain that Dean
+Welldon has here been guilty of a confusion which only betrays his
+apologetic poverty in face of this great crisis. Science--and it is
+especially science that the clergy conceive as the rival they have to
+discredit--has no concern whatever with the war. Science, either as an
+organised body of teachers or as a branch of culture, has never
+discussed war, and never had the faintest duty or opportunity to do so.
+Economic science may discuss particular aspects of war, but the
+economist deals with things as they are, not as they ought to be. Moral
+science even is not a preaching agency, desirous of dividing with the
+clergy the ethical guidance of the people. When men pit science against
+religion, they usually refer to its superior power of explaining
+reality. And if it be objected that therefore no morally educative
+agency would remain if religion were discarded, the answer is simple. A
+system of moral idealism founded on science--it is absurd to call it
+science--does exist, and might at any time be enlarged to the
+proportions of a national or international educative agency. As yet it
+is left to individual cultivation or crystallised in a few tiny
+associations, such as Ethical and Secularist and, partly, Socialist
+Societies; and I venture to say, from a large experience of these
+bodies, that, apart from the professed peace societies, they have been
+more assiduous than any religious associations in England, in proportion
+to their work, in demanding the substitution of arbitration for war, and
+that the overwhelming majority, almost the entirety, of their members
+are pacifists. To speak of this small organised force, with its slender
+influence, as equally discredited with the far mightier and
+thousand-year-older influence of the Churches would be strangely
+incongruous; and it is hardly less incongruous to drag science into the
+comparison.
+
+A somewhat similar distinction must be observed in regard to
+civilisation. The antithesis of religion and civilisation is confused
+and confusing. Christian ministers have claimed that _they_ are the
+moral element of civilisation, and they have jealously combated every
+effort to take from them or divide with them that function. They resist
+every attempt to exclude their almost useless Bible-lessons from our
+schools, and to substitute for them a direct and more practical moral
+education of children. They have for fifteen hundred years claimed and
+possessed the monopoly of ethical culture in European civilisation, and
+we are a little puzzled when they turn round and say, with an air of
+argument, that if Christianity has failed civilisation also has failed.
+There is only one civilisation in Europe that has attempted to
+substitute a humanitarian for a religious training of conduct; one
+nation that is plainly and overwhelmingly non-Christian. That nation is
+France. And France has one of the best moral records in modern Europe,
+and has behaved nobly throughout this lamentable business. In fine, if
+we take Dean Welldon's words in the most generous sense, if we assume
+that he refers to the whole body of culture and sentiment which, in our
+time, aspires to mould and direct the race apart from Christian
+doctrine, the answer has already been given. Christianity is, as a power
+in Europe, fourteen centuries old; this humanitarianism is hardly a
+century old. But there has surely been more progress made during this
+last century toward the destruction of the military system, and more
+progress in the elimination of brutality from war, than in the whole
+preceding thirteen centuries. Does Dean Welldon doubt that? Or does he
+regard it as a mere coincidence?
+
+Thus, whether we turn to Churchman or Nonconformist, to cleric or
+layman, we find no satisfactory apology. I have before me a short
+article by Mr. Max Pemberton on the question, "Will Christianity survive
+the war?" He uses the most consecrated phrases of the Church, and leaves
+no doubt whatever that he writes in defence of Christianity. But Mr.
+Pemberton practically confines himself to a very emphatic personal
+assurance that Christianity _will_ survive the war, and does not
+honestly face a single one of the questions of "the Pagan" against whom
+he is writing. He does make one serious point of a peculiar character.
+There are, he says, "23,000 priests fighting for France in the
+trenches." Mr. Pemberton seems to find it easy to accept the interested
+statements of those Roman Catholic journalists who make sectarian use of
+some of the London dailies. There are only about 30,000 priests in
+France, and, since none of them are younger than twenty-three, to
+suppose that seventy-five per cent. of them are of military age is to
+take a remarkable view of the population of France. In any case, there
+is no special ground for rhapsody. They are not volunteers; in France
+every man must do his civic duty. We may appreciate their devotion to
+their religion on the battle-field, but Mr. Pemberton must be
+imperfectly acquainted with the French character if he supposes that the
+thirty-four million unbelievers of France are going to return to the
+Church because the younger _curés_ did not try to evade the military
+service which the State imposed on them.
+
+Another document I may quote is a manifesto issued by the "Hampstead
+Evangelical Free Church Council," a joint declaration of the principal
+Nonconformist ministers of that highly cultivated suburb. It does not
+purport to vindicate the Churches, yet some of its observations in
+connection with the war open out a new page of apologetics. These
+clergymen invite all the citizens of their district, on the ground of
+the war, to attend church, even if they have not been in the habit of
+doing so. On what more precise ground? The able lawyer who received this
+invitation, and forwarded it to me, thought it, not the most ingenious,
+but the most curious, piece of pleading he had ever known. The citizens
+of Hampstead were invited to go to church "to offer up to God a
+sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for his goodness to us as a
+nation"! At the very time the eminent preachers were writing this, the
+darkened city still cowered under the threat of a horrible outrage; the
+shattered homes and fresh graves of Scarborough and Whitby reminded us
+faintly of the horrors beyond the sea; the maimed soldiers all over the
+country, the sad figures of the bereaved, the anxious hearts of a
+million of our people, were but a beginning of the evil that had fallen
+on us. We had in fourteen years, since the last war, been obliged to
+spend a thousand millions sterling in preparation for a war we did not
+desire, and we were entering upon an expenditure of something more than
+a thousand millions in a year. All this we had incurred through no fault
+of ours. And these clergymen thought it a good opportunity to invite us
+to go to church to thank God for "his goodness to us as a nation."
+
+Another manifesto is signed by a body of archbishops and bishops of the
+Anglican Church. It enjoined all the faithful to supplicate the Almighty
+on January 3rd to stop the war. This was to be done "all round the
+Empire." I will not indulge in any cheap sarcasm as to the result,
+though one would probably be right in saying that, if the end be
+deferred to the year 1917, they will still believe that their prayers
+had effect. What it is more material to notice is that the prelates
+think that "these are days of great spiritual opportunity." It seems
+that "the shattering of so much that seemed established reveals the
+vanity of human affairs," and that "anxiety, separation, and loss have
+made many hearts sensible of the approach of Christ to the soul." It is,
+perhaps, unkind to examine this emotional language from an intellectual
+point of view, but one feels that there is a subtle element of apology
+in it. These spiritual advantages may outweigh the secular pain; may
+even justify God's share in the great catastrophe. I have examined, and
+will discuss more fully in the next chapter, the theistic side of this
+plea. Intellectually, it borders on monstrosity: it is the survival of
+an ancient and barbaric conception. The notion that "the approach of
+Christ to the soul" is felt especially in time of affliction is merely a
+statement of a certain type of emotional experience, while the
+revelation of "the vanity of human affairs" is sheer perversity. Human
+affairs have for ages been so badly managed, in this respect, that we
+cannot in a decade or a century rid ourselves of such a legacy. The real
+moral is to discover who were responsible for that legacy of disorder
+and violence, and to put our affairs on a new and sounder basis.
+
+A considerable number of clerical writers proceed on the suggestion
+discreetly advanced by these Anglican prelates. Let us wait, they ask,
+until the clouds of war have rolled away, and then estimate the
+spiritual gain to men from the trial through which they have passed, and
+the closer association of the Churches which it may bring about. Now I
+have no doubt that many who really believe the doctrines of
+Christianity, yet have for years neglected the duties which their belief
+imposes on them, will be induced by this awful experience to return to
+allegiance. The number is limited, and an equal or greater number may
+be, and probably will be, induced to surrender religion entirely, and
+with good reason, by the reflections with which this war inspires them.
+But to insinuate that this spiritual advantage, if it be an advantage,
+of the few is justly purchased by the appalling suffering and disorder
+brought about by the war is one of those religious affirmations which
+seem to the outsider positively repulsive.
+
+I do not speak merely of the deaths, the pain, the privation, the
+outrages, the flood of tears and blood over half of Europe. This,
+indeed, is of itself enough to make the theory repellent to any who do
+not share the ascetic views taught in the Churches. The notion that an
+evil is justified if good issue from it is akin to the notion that the
+end justifies the means. But I would draw attention to an aspect of the
+war which is almost ignored by these eloquent preachers. They eagerly
+record every flash of heroism, every spark of charity and mercy, that
+the war evokes. They refer sympathetically to the dead and the bereaved,
+the outraged girls and women--whom, in the narrowest Puritanism, they
+forbid to rid themselves of the awful burden laid on them by drunken
+brutes--the shattered homes and monuments. But there is a side of war
+which they must know, and it demands plain speaking. It relaxes the
+control of moral restraints even where it was before operative. The
+illegitimate-birth rate of England and France will faintly tell the
+story before the year is out. Inquiry in any town where our soldiers are
+lodged, or in the rear of the French and English (or any other)
+trenches, will tell it more fully. I do not speak of crime and violence,
+but of willing sexual intercourse where it was never known before. These
+things, and the increased drunkenness and the stirring of old passions,
+are regarded by the clergy as amongst the most evil things of life. Do
+they seriously suggest that they have been brought in to secure, or are
+justified by, the spiritual advantage of the refined and emotional few
+whose religion is only deepened by affliction?
+
+In short, I find not a single phrase of valid explanation or apology in
+these and other prominent clerical pronouncements I have read. They are
+superficial, contradictory, and vapid. Nothing is more common than for
+religious writers to protest that the conception of reality which is
+opposed to theirs is shallow. What depth, what sincere grip of reality,
+does one find in any of these pulpit utterances? Yet I have taken the
+pronouncements of official bodies or of distinguished preachers who may
+be trusted to put the Christian feeling in its most persuasive form. One
+thinks that God sent the war; another attributes it to German rebels
+against God. One regards it as a spiritual agency devised for our good;
+another says that it is an unmitigated calamity sent for our punishment.
+One sees in it the failure of Christianity; others find in it precisely
+a confirmation of Christian teaching. Some think it will draw men to
+God; others that it will drive men from God. Unity, perhaps, we cannot
+expect; but the empty rhetoric and utter sophistry of most of these
+utterances reveal the complete lack of defence. On the main indictment
+of the Christian Church, its failure to have condemned and removed
+militarism long ago, all are silent; or the one preacher who notices it
+can only dejectedly confess that it is true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WAR AND THEISM
+
+
+In the leading Catholic periodical of this country there has been some
+nervous discussion of the attitude of the Pope. A new man, a strong and
+enlightened man, happens to have mounted the chair of Peter in the midst
+of the war. For more than a century his predecessors have bemoaned the
+increasing wickedness of the world: Pius VII, tossed like a helpless
+cork on the waves of the Revolution; Leo XII and Pius VIII, the
+associates of the Holy Alliance; Gregory XVI, eating sweetmeats or
+mumbling his breviary while young Italy sweated blood; Pius IX, grasping
+eagerly his tatters of sovereignty; Leo XIII, the unsuccessful
+diplomatist; Pius X, the medieval monk. They saw their Church shrink
+decade by decade, and they witnessed the prosperity of all that they
+denounced. Benedict XV came to save the Church, and a great moral
+opportunity awaited him. But, while claiming to be the moral arbitrator
+of the world, he avoids his plain duty, and is content to repeat the
+worn phrases about the iniquity of the modern spirit. His apologists say
+that the war is politics, and that Popes must not interfere in politics.
+
+I have earlier explained in what sense this war presents a political
+aspect to Benedict XV, and given the reason for his reluctance. It is
+typical of the whole failure of Christianity. A little over nineteen
+centuries ago, it is said in the churches, a star shone over the cradle
+of the Saviour, and choirs of angels announced his coming as a promise
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men." I am not in this little
+work examining the whole question of the influence of Christianity. But
+it is well to recall that, according to its own records, its first and
+greatest promise to the world was peace; and to that old Roman Empire,
+and to Europe at any stage in its later history, no greater blessing
+could have been brought. Has Christianity succeeded?
+
+But the religious interest of the war is by no means exhausted when we
+have concluded that it marks, in one of the most important departments
+of human action, the complete failure of historical Christianity. My
+purpose is to discuss this relation to the Churches, and it would not be
+completed unless I considered the war in relation to their fundamental
+doctrine, the moral government of the universe by a Supreme Being. In a
+few months, we hope, the war will be over: the Allies will have
+triumphed. We know, from experience and from history, what will follow
+in the Churches. From end to end of Britain, from Dover to Penzance and
+from Southampton to Aberdeen, there will rise a jubilant cry that God
+has blessed our arms and awarded us the victory. Now that we are in the
+midst of the horrors and burdens of the war God is little mentioned. One
+would imagine that the great majority of the clergy conceived him as
+standing aside, for some inscrutable reason, and letting wicked men
+deploy their perverse forces. When the triumph comes, gilding the past
+sacrifices or driving them from memory, God will be on every lip. The
+whole nation will be implored to come and kneel before the altars.
+Royalty and nobility and military, judges and stockbrokers and working
+men--above all, a surging, thrilling, ecstatic mass of women--will
+gather round the clergy, and will avow that they see the finger of God
+in this glorious consummation. The relation of the war to God will then
+become the supreme consideration for the Christian mind. It may be more
+instructive to consider it now, before the last flood of emotion pours
+over our judgments.
+
+I have already discussed some of the clerical allusions to the share of
+God in the war. They are so frankly repellent that one cannot be
+surprised that the majority of the clergy prefer to be silent on that
+point. They prefer to await the victory and build on its more genial and
+indulgent emotions. The war is either a blessing or a curse. One would
+think that there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are
+bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily
+pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of
+the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human
+nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, and
+so on.
+
+Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse,
+yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty. This theory is
+natural enough in the minds of men and women who believe in hell. In
+earlier ages men could not distinguish between the law of retaliation
+and the need to deter criminals by using violence against them when they
+transgressed. In many primitive systems of justice the law of
+retaliation is expressly consecrated. It is even introduced,
+inconsistently and as a survival of barbaric times, in the Babylonian
+and the Judaic codes, side by side with saner views. It is, of course,
+merely a systematisation of brute passion. In the beginning, if a man
+knocked your tooth out, you knocked one of his teeth out. With the
+growth of law and justice, the barbarous nature of the impulse was
+recognised, and the community, by its representatives, inflicted a
+"punishment" on the offender instead of allowing the offended to
+retaliate. With the modern improvement of moral sentiments we have
+realised that this is an imperfect advance on the barbaric idea. The
+community has no more right to "punish" than the offended individual
+had. We now impose hardship on an offender only for the purpose of
+intimidating him from repeating the offence, or of deterring others from
+offending. The idea is still somewhat crude, and a third stage will in
+time be reached; but it is satisfactory that we now--not since the
+advent of Christianity, but since the rise of modern humanism--all admit
+that the only permissible procedure is deterrence, and not punishment as
+such.
+
+It may seem ungracious to be ever repeating that these improvements did
+not take place during the period of Christian influence, but in the
+recent period of its decay. There is, however, in this case a most
+important and urgent reason for emphasising the fact. I say that we
+_all_ admit the more humane conception of punishment, but this must be
+qualified. In human affairs we do: Carlyle was, perhaps, the last
+moralist to cling to the old conception. But in the religious world the
+old idea has been flagrantly retained. The doctrine of eternal
+punishment is clearly based on the barbaric old idea that a prince whose
+dignity has been insulted may justly inflict the most barbarous
+punishment on the offender. Theologians have, since the days of Thomas
+Aquinas, wasted whole reams of parchment in defending the dogma of hell,
+because they knew nothing whatever of comparative jurisprudence and the
+evolution of moral ideas. To us the development of the doctrine is
+clear. In the Christian doctrine of hell we have a flagrant survival of
+the early barbaric theory of punishment. Modern divines--while
+continuing to describe the non-religious view of life as "superficial"
+and the Christian as "profound"--have actually yielded to the modern
+sentiment, and in a very large measure rejected one of the fundamental
+dogmas of the Christian tradition. In order to conceal the procedure as
+far as possible, some of them are now contending brazenly that Christ
+never taught the doctrine of eternal punishment, and are deluding their
+uncultivated congregations with sophistical manipulations of Greek
+words.
+
+This does not mean that Christians have lower moral sentiments than
+non-Christians, but that the rigidity of their traditions, which they
+regard as sacred and unalterable, imposes restrictions on them. Hence
+the fact that, while Protestants have so very largely rejected the
+doctrine of hell, Roman Catholics, with their more rigid conservatism
+and claim of infallibility, still cling to it, and offer the amazing
+spectacle of a body claiming to possess the highest ideals in the world,
+yet actually cherishing an entirely barbaric theory. There is probably
+not a Catholic lawyer in the world who does not reject the old idea of
+punishment as barbaric, yet he placidly believes that God retains it.
+That is why we find a Catholic archbishop like Carr putting forth so
+revolting an idea of the war, while Protestant preachers as a rule
+shrink from mentioning God in connection with it. These things make it
+impossible for one to understand how non-Christians can say, as they do
+sometimes, that if they _were_ to accept a creed, it would be the Roman
+creed.
+
+Any theory of the war which proceeds on the lines of the hell-theory is
+simply barbaric, and is beneath serious discussion. We know to-day that
+both ethics and religion are in a state of constant evolution. We look
+back over a stream of several thousand years of historically traceable
+development; we follow that stream faintly through earlier tens of
+thousands of years in the ideas of primitive peoples; and we see the
+evolution going on plainly in the creeds and ethical codes of our own
+time. But the practice of registering certain stages of this evolution
+in sacred books or codes, which are then imposed on man for centuries or
+millennia as something unalterable, has been and is a very serious
+hindrance to development, both in ethics and religion. It is all the
+worse because these codes and sacred books always contain certain
+elements which belong to even earlier and less enlightened stages, and
+whole regiments of philosophers or theologians are employed for ages in
+putting glosses on ancient and barbaric ideas at which the world
+eventually laughs. However, we need not linger here over these ancient
+ways of regarding life. The man who keeps his God at a moral level which
+we disdain ourselves rarely listens to argument. He protects his "faith"
+by believing that it is a mortal sin (involving sentence of hell) to
+read any book that would examine it critically. It is a most ingenious
+arrangement by which the doctrine of a vindictive God protects itself
+against moral progress.
+
+Now any suggestion that God sent this war upon Europe--whether as a
+judgment on the clergy, or a judgment on unbelievers, or a judgment on
+the arrogance of the Germans, etc.--is part of this old barbarism, and
+may be disregarded. It conceives that God is vindictive, and at the same
+time assures us that Christianity sternly condemns vindictiveness. It
+allows God to deal mighty blows at those who affront him, and tells men
+to bear affront with patience and turn the other cheek to the smiter. It
+is simply part of that mixture and confusion of old and new ideas which
+a codified religion always exhibits. We pass it by, and turn to more
+serious considerations. I pass by also eccentric ideas of Deity like
+those of Sir Oliver Lodge or Mr. G. B. Shaw--two oracles who have been
+singularly silent on the religious aspect of the war. Let us examine the
+main religious problem as broadly and as honestly as we can.
+
+The first and chief reflection that occurs to any man who does thus
+seriously examine the relation of the war to theism is that, after all,
+it is not so easy to disentangle theology from the crude old doctrines
+which our more liberal divines think they have abandoned. They tell us
+that they do not believe in a vindictive Deity, they disdain the
+doctrine of eternal punishment, they smile at many of the Judaic
+conceptions of Jehovah in the Old Testament. God is the all-holy and
+benevolent ruler of the universe. They refuse to believe that the souls
+of sinners and unbelievers are tortured for ever after death, and trust
+the whole scheme of things to the love and justice of God.
+
+The grave difficulty of this enlightened theology, indeed of all
+theology, is the immense amount of pain and evil in the universe, and
+this mighty war we are considering puts it in a very acute form. It is
+amusing to look back on some of the lines of apologetics in recent
+years. There was a school of people, following some "profound" religious
+thinker, who held that evil was "only relative." They made the wonderful
+discovery that everything real is good, in the metaphysical sense, and
+evil is unreal. Evil, they said, is merely the negation, the
+falling-short, of good; and you do not ask for the creator or cause of a
+negative thing. More recently a school endeavoured to come to their
+assistance with the discovery that pain does not really exist at all.
+One did not need to know philosophy or science in order to realise that
+a sensation of pain is just as positive and real a thing as a sensation
+of pleasure; or that, although death is _only_ the negation of life, one
+is really entitled to ask why one's dear child is thus "negated" at the
+age of six or twelve. Then there came this new school with its discovery
+that pain does not exist. Death, of course, is an entry into a more
+glorious life beyond; pain is an illusion to be banished by resolute
+thought. These childish symposia were interrupted every few years by
+some disastrous earthquake, the sinking of a great liner, an epidemic of
+disease, a famine, and so on; but the pious philosophers bravely
+struggled on. One may trust that the war has reduced them to silence,
+and that we need not linger over them.
+
+Then there was the school which sought desperately to find good in evil.
+A man or woman is stricken with disease. Very often it brings with it a
+softening, an improvement, of character; either in the patient or in the
+nurses, or in both. Our religious philosophers fancied they caught in
+this a glimpse of the divine plan: cancer was an instrument of
+righteousness in the hands of the Almighty, the bacillus of
+tuberculosis was a moral agency. They detected cases in which adverse
+fortune had sobered and softened a man: the finger of Providence. In
+France there was a very considerable return to the Catholic Church, and
+recovery of its power, after the disastrous war of 1870. In the south of
+Italy there is always much less sexual freedom for a time after an
+earthquake has buried a few tens of thousands under the ruins of their
+houses. I would undertake to fill a quarto volume with instances of good
+things which arose out of or followed upon evil experiences. We saw that
+the present war is being examined in the same respect. There are "great
+spiritual opportunities": hundreds of thousands of young men are being
+compelled (by the authorities) to go to church who had not been for
+years; the different denominations are fraternising as they never did
+before; the churches are rather fuller than they had been of late:
+charity is awakened on a prodigious scale; zeal for an ideal (the
+violated peace of Belgium) is dragging men even from our slums to the
+colours. Here again one could at least fill a moderate treatise with the
+things achieved; and beyond them all is the unuttered vision of the
+crowded churches at the triumphant close of the war, perhaps that
+long-coveted religious revival.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that this theory of the war will be
+assiduously pressed when nature has drawn her green mantle once more
+over the blackened area of the war and our hearts are lifted up by
+thought of victory. It is already being urged, and I would add a little
+to the comments I have already passed on it.
+
+The clergy would do well to realise that, whatever virtue this theory
+may have in soothing the minds and dissolving the doubts of their
+followers, to an outsider it seems monstrous. In the first place, it
+includes no sense of proportion, and amounts to a colossal untruth. We
+must surely take into account the amount of evil inflicted and the
+amount of good that ensues. Take sickness, for instance. One would
+imagine that, if Christians seriously believe that illness is sent by
+God to achieve certain salutary modifications of character, they ought
+strenuously to oppose the modern determination to reduce disease to a
+minimum. They do not, and would, on the contrary, soon reduce to silence
+any religious crank who proposed it. They know perfectly well that the
+cases of "spiritual advantage" from illness bear no proportion whatever
+to the amount of suffering in the world. Slight but painful illnesses
+rarely have any beneficent effect on character; very frequently the
+reverse. Any large city, at any given moment, is racked with pains which
+do but give rise to curses, or a polite equivalent. Most of the
+irritation and perversion of character is due to morbid influences. And
+for every case in which a long illness issues in some signal advance of
+character, a hundred others could be quoted in which the illness was an
+unmitigated calamity. So it is with bereavement and with adversity of
+fortune. Look honestly into the experience of any class of the
+community, and ask in what _proportion_ of cases narrowness of means,
+especially after comfort, brings a "spiritual advantage."
+
+So it is above all with this war. Any man who thinks that the awful
+perversion of the character of a great European people, the death of
+such vast numbers in such painful circumstances, the ruin of further
+millions, and all the innumerable ugly results of a great war, were
+worth bringing about in order to secure a few spiritual advantages has
+neither sense of proportion nor sense of decency nor sense of humour.
+The theory would be too repulsive if it were put in this plain form, and
+it is more usual merely to point out these good results and hint that
+war is not absolutely and in every respect an evil. As if any person
+ever said that it was. The point is simple, and ought not to be
+obscured. A few incidental advantages do not reconcile us to this
+colossal misery, suffering, and waste, and do not in the slightest
+degree alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed
+human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed
+such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary
+disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained,
+what should we think of him?
+
+The parallel reminds us that of infinite wisdom we expect infinitely
+more than of a human ruler. Once unintelligent nature had a crude,
+wasteful, hard method of producing new and higher types of life. Man,
+having intelligence, produces the same result without waste or
+suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an
+intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man
+who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human
+ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they
+bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us
+of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the
+war was designed for certain practical uses, such as those we have had
+suggested by various divines, one may reply at once that a more brutal
+and unjust way of attaining those ends could not have been devised. It
+is almost impossible to conceive any man seriously entertaining the
+notion. Yet all the jubilation and thanksgiving that will follow the
+war, all the supplication that accompanies its fortunes to-day, and the
+whole teaching of Christian theology, imply that God did direct the
+political movements and military ambitions which have culminated in the
+war. Even a human statesman could have devised a less terrible method of
+attaining any end that has yet been conceived for the war. The idea of
+the war as a punishment is quite logical and intelligible, though five
+hundred years out of date. But the idea of the war as a medicinal or an
+educative process has neither logic nor intelligibility, and does not
+even attain that consistency with modern ethical sentiments which it
+seeks. The colossal amount of suffering inflicted on innocent people and
+on children puts it entirely out of court.
+
+Thirdly, this theory, as I said, raises the question whether the end
+justifies the means. Here we have another illustration of the way in
+which Christian dogma keeps the Christian conscience in many matters
+behind the ethical sentiment of the age. Many liberal divines would
+express genuine repugnance at Archbishop Carr's view of the war; yet
+some of the most liberal of these divines and laymen are almost as
+backward in another direction. They justify the world-process through
+which we are struggling on the ground that it will, we hope, issue in a
+nobler order of things: of the war, in particular, that hope is
+entertained, and to the war, accordingly, this theory of justification
+is applied. That is a case of the end justifying the means. Christian
+thinkers are advancing so rapidly and erratically that in some cases we
+are not clear whether the writer does or does not regard God as infinite
+in power and intelligence. We may ignore these few cases. The vast
+majority emphatically hold that view. In their regard we can say only
+what has been said a hundred times. Whether you speak of the
+world-process in general or any particular cruel phase of it, such as
+this war, you maintain that God chose, out of many conceivable ways, the
+one way that is marked by cruelty and suffering. An infinite God is not
+so confined in the choice of means. And just as we say of the
+world-process in general, that to build the sunnier lives of a remote
+generation on the sufferings of this and earlier generations implies a
+grave injustice to _us_, so we must say of the war. No spiritual
+advantages to those who survive will reconcile us to the suffering and
+the loss of those who fell in the tragic combat. I speak impersonally.
+It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I
+nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood
+over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing
+experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the whole ghastly orgy of
+blood and tears in Europe, I feel unutterable disdain of these paltry
+efforts to justify the ways of God to man.
+
+Let us look a little deeper into the matter. No doubt the plain
+statement that God "sent" or caused this war will excite a certain
+repugnance in many Christian minds. They will prefer to say that God
+"permitted" it. Man has "free will," and it is the plan of providence to
+give a certain play to this free will. When man has bruised his
+shins--more frequently the shins of other people--God may, on being
+supplicated sufficiently, issue his veto and put matters right. I am
+quite acquainted, from a severe theological education, with the more
+learned language in which this theory is expressed by theologians, but
+I prefer to deal with it as it exists in the words of most preachers
+and the minds of most Christians.
+
+It would be impossible here to deal at any length with the doctrine of
+free will. Unless you conceive it in some novel and irrelevant sense, as
+Professor Bergson does, it is a very much disputed thing amongst the
+experts whose business it is to inform us on the subject--our
+psychologists. The majority of modern psychologists seem to reject it
+altogether. On the other hand, no theologian has ever yet reconciled it
+in any intelligible scheme with the supposed omnipotence of God. But it
+is not necessary to enter into these abstruse considerations. Let us
+take the matter in the concrete.
+
+We look back to-day on a long series of processes and circumstances
+which culminate in the war. There is the whole history of Germany for a
+hundred and fifty years inspiring the German people with a bias toward
+aggressive war; there are the economic and geographical circumstances
+which, at the end of the nineteenth century, begin to make it think
+again of aggressive war; there is the overflowing population, bred by
+order of the clergy who stupidly condemn an artificial restriction of
+births; there is the coincident trouble of Austria with the Slavs, of
+England with its subject peoples, and so on. In the eyes of the careful
+student a hundred lines of circumstance and development have led to this
+war. The melodramatic idea that it all springs from the free will of the
+Kaiser, or of a group of soldiers and statesmen, need not be seriously
+considered. Moreover, even when we introduce the personal element--and
+the personality of the Kaiser has had a very considerable influence--it
+is foolish to throw the whole burden on free will. The mood and outlook
+and ambition of the Kaiser take their colour from his notoriously morbid
+nervous frame. In a word, you have a mighty concurrence of movements,
+whether acts of will or otherwise, converging in all parts of Europe
+toward this war. Was God indifferent to the whole of those movements?
+
+Those movements are particularly traceable in Europe during the last
+fourteen years. Before that there was a similar concurrence of movements
+eventuating in the South African War; and in the meantime a series of
+processes and circumstances had given us the Russo-Japanese War and the
+Balkan-Turkish War and the Mexican War. So we might go over the wars of
+the nineteenth century and all earlier wars. The "permissiveness" or
+indifference of the ruler of the universe grows amazingly. In the
+meantime we had mighty catastrophes like the sinking of the _Titanic_
+and other ships, the earthquakes at Messina and elsewhere, famines and
+epidemics and floods in various places, and great numbers of murders,
+railway and other accidents, etc. We begin to ask _where_ the ruling of
+the universe comes in at all, and, as far as human events go, all that
+we can gather in the way of reply is that sometimes individuals who pray
+very fervently get their diseases healed or their coffers filled; and
+even these claims do not pass rational inquiry.
+
+Now here is the precise difficulty of the unbeliever, and this present
+tragedy makes it acute. We ask our neighbour, or seek in some learned
+theological treatise, what are the indications of this government of the
+universe, and we are told about the making of stars and the decoration
+of flowers and the putting of instincts into animals or pretty patterns
+on their skins. But when we point out that the really important thing
+in our part of the universe is this human life of ours, imperfectly
+protected as yet against disease and malice (which is largely disease)
+and natural forces, the theologian has no clear evidence to produce.
+Even the evidence he draws from stars and flowers and peacocks' tails
+and sunsets, with which he is, as a rule, very imperfectly acquainted,
+is, of course, heatedly disputed, and the proper authorities on these
+subjects are, on the whole, not well disposed toward his interpretation.
+But we need not consider that here. Where we should most logically
+expect the hand of Providence is in the human order, because in that
+order catastrophe is infinitely more important, in view of man's
+capacity for pain. Yet it is precisely in regard to this order that the
+theologian is vaguest and least satisfactory. He talks grandly of God
+moving every atom in the universe, counting the hairs of our heads,
+numbering (but not preventing) the fall of the sparrows, and so on; but
+when we ask for the evidence of God's concern with contemporary human
+events he is very vague if they are good events, and, if they are evil,
+he hastily disclaims any interference of the Deity. Some of our more
+advanced theologians are claiming that the finest improvement they have
+made in their science is to have brought God from _without_ the universe
+(where no theologian had ever put him) and make him _immanent_ in it.
+But they seem just as incapable as the others to trace his interposition
+in human events.
+
+Theologians still maintain a valiant and stubborn fight against
+scientific men, but they do not fight historians. They are very keen on
+maintaining the influence of God over atoms and stars and roses and
+birds, but not half so keen to vindicate it in the life of man. The
+story of the world, _our_ world, may be divided into three chapters: a
+chapter describing the moulding of the globe and the rocks, a chapter
+describing the slow evolution of the plants and animals, and a chapter
+describing the antics and fortunes of man. Some may surrender the first
+chapter to science, some the second chapter, but it looks as if they all
+surrender the third. They have long been accustomed to surrender the
+early part, and very much the longer and more laborious part, of man's
+story to natural forces, or the devil. Then there was a melodramatic
+notion that God, after the lapse of hundreds of thousands of years,
+began to take an interest in one very small people and kept revealing
+things to it, and smiting its enemies, until Christianity was given to
+the world. History tells the story in a totally different way. We find
+the stream of moral and religious evolution flowing steadily on nineteen
+hundred years ago, much as we do to-day. At this point, of course, the
+theologian does make a struggle with the historian. In proportion to the
+imperfectness of his culture and the backwardness and conservatism of
+his Church, he fights for miraculous interpositions in human events
+nineteen hundred years ago. But we need not delay to examine that
+difference of opinion, because the later period suffices for my purpose.
+
+A few theologians, not well acquainted with history, see another
+miraculous interposition in the fourth century, when Christianity was
+established; and the Roman Catholic--in the intellectual rear, as
+usual--believes in hundreds of miraculous interpositions, in small
+matters, as late as the year 1914. But in order to take a broad view of
+the matter we may leave these controversies with the more reactionary on
+one side. The history of Europe for the last fifteen centuries at least
+is now entrusted to able laymen, and it has been purged of divine
+interpositions. Innumerable myths and legends, often based on what are
+now acknowledged to be spurious documents, have been cast out of the
+science, and we are presented with a quite continuous and purely natural
+sequence of events. Religious historians like Bishop Creighton or Lord
+Bryce do not find their periods broken by divine interpositions; the
+writers of the Cambridge History do not occasionally arrest us before
+some great event and warn us that the chain of human causation seems to
+be obscure or discontinuous. There are, of course, problems of history,
+but they are not obscurities which, like the obscure places in science,
+tempt the theologian to enter and claim a divine interposition. The
+story is from beginning to end--to use Nietzsche's phrase--"human, all
+too human." On the whole, as it has been hitherto written, it is a story
+of wars, and, though patriotic piety puts its gloss on the issue of a
+war here and there, the historian does not find any serious problem in
+them. No French historian will now claim divine action in the Napoleonic
+wars, and assuredly few of us are prepared to see the finger of God in
+the fortunate issue of Prussia's many campaigns since Frederick the
+Great.
+
+Whatever we may think of the cosmic process generally, the human part of
+that process does not encourage a theological interpretation. Man is
+working out his own destiny, and doing it ill. We see him, like some
+pedlar plodding along a country road under his burdens, carrying through
+whole centuries institutions and ideas and follies that he will
+eventually shed. When he drops them, there is no more element of
+miracle or revelation in his action than when he discovers the use of
+steam or of aluminium or of the spectroscope. His mind expands and his
+ideals rise. It is a little incongruous to suppose that some infinitely
+wiser and affectionate parent was looking on all the time and giving no
+assistance. In the dialogue between Mephistopheles and God which Goethe
+prefixes to his _Faust_, the devil obviously scores. In the sight of
+such an intelligence man must have made a pretty fool of himself during
+the last 1500 years. We human beings are more charitable. Take the whole
+story as the gradual development of human intelligence and emotion under
+unfavourable political conditions, hampered by a despotic and perverse
+clergy, and it seems natural enough.
+
+This is the impression one gets from history, and the nearer history is
+to our own time and the better we know it, the less it suggests a divine
+guidance. There is something parochial or rural about the average
+Christian way of looking at events. One day the German Christian goes to
+church to thank God for driving the Russians out of East Prussia; the
+next day the English Christian thanks the same God for killing or
+wounding 20,000 Germans at Neuve Chapelle--with the help of 350 guns.
+Yet such things as these are the only claims we have offered to us of
+the action of God in human events. Neither the steps that man takes
+onward nor the steps that he takes backward are ascribed to divine
+influence. All that is claimed is that when a ship goes down, for
+instance, he saves the saved, and "permits" the rest to be drowned; when
+a war has been raging for a few months by his "permission," he puts a
+stop to it when one army is worn out. The unbeliever is really entitled
+to a good deal of sympathy for his inability to follow this tortuous
+reasoning with confidence. One cannot entirely blame him for being more
+interested in the heart of man than in the petals of a rose.
+
+These considerations are, of course, not novel. I am only applying to
+this special case of the war a difficulty that has been discussed in all
+ages, and has been acutely felt by very able religious thinkers. How a
+group of bishops can sit down to write, in very deliberate and elegant
+language, that such a calamity as this makes the soul more sensible of
+"the approach of Christ" is one of the many little mysteries of the
+clerical mind. It has precisely the opposite effect in any logical mind.
+When the way of life is smooth, and our nation or home is prospering, we
+may be genially disposed to think that God is near and is looking after
+us as well as the sparrows. But when a black storm bursts suddenly and
+disastrously on us; when the earth shakes their roofs on ten thousand of
+our fellows, or a great ship strikes a rock and pours a laughing crowd
+suddenly into the lap of death; when vast provinces are laid desolate by
+war, and we see the tens of thousands clasping the hand of their loved
+ones for the last time, it seems rather uncanny that this should suggest
+to any person the approach of Christ. To very many people it is a
+confirmation of the general impression they get from the world-process
+and the story of man: that these great forces deploy and interlace and
+build up and destroy without the slightest intervention from without.
+
+In our time, we must remember, this difficulty had already been
+enormously increased. St. Augustine, who felt the problem acutely in the
+prime of his intelligence, had really a very much lighter task than the
+modern divine. He had merely to suggest why evil was permitted in the
+narrow world he knew; and he had the great advantage of being able to
+appeal to a primitive sin and primitive punishment of the race. The
+problem became more serious when original sin, or at least the notion
+that the race might justly be damned for one man's fault, was abandoned.
+It became graver still when science discovered the tombs of inhabitants
+of this globe who had lived during millions of earlier years, and showed
+that the very law of their life and progress was struggle against evil.
+Every attempt to minimise the struggle of those earlier ages has failed.
+At a time when there was no possibility of "spiritual advantage" there
+was acute consciousness of pain, the struggle and suffering were
+prodigious. Theistic literature of the last half century, growing more
+weary and more wistful in each decade, reflects the increasing
+difficulty. If any man can see in this war a relief of the difficulty,
+and not an appalling accentuation and illustration of it, he must be
+gifted with a peculiar type of mind and emotion. It is more probable
+that an increasing number will conclude that, if God is indifferent to
+these things, they will be indifferent to him. Professor William James,
+in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, declared that the only gods
+the men of the new generation would recognise would be gods of some use
+to them. The war does not encourage the chances of the Christian God.
+
+A few modern religious thinkers seem to imagine that they have found
+some relief by devising the formula that God's plan is to "co-operate
+with man," and in those modern advances which I have freely admitted
+they see indications of this co-operation. This new formula is not a
+whit better than the other phrases which have, at various stages, been
+regarded by religions people as profound thoughts. In the recent history
+of moral progress we have, as a rule, a minority of high-minded men and
+women struggling to impress their sentiments on the inert majority. The
+new theologian is not daunted in the application of his theory by the
+fact that a large proportion of these pioneers did not believe in God at
+all, so I will not discuss that aspect; though no doubt the plain man
+will find it interesting to trace how, in the earlier and more difficult
+days of modern humanism, so few of the reformers were Christian
+ministers and so many Rationalists. From the historical point of view,
+however, we find this line of development quite intelligible. We find,
+for instance, Robert Owen (a great Rationalist) advocating the
+substitution of arbitration for war nearly a century ago, and we
+discover the earlier sources of Owen's enthusiasm in English Radicals
+like Godwin, who were affected by the early French Revolutionaries, who
+had been influenced by Rousseau, and so on. It is a quite natural
+evolution of ideas, as they find a congenial soil in each generation in
+certain types of temperament. But where are the traces or what was the
+nature of God's co-operation with these men? Looking to their generally
+heterodox character and the hostility of the Churches to them, the idea
+is not without humour; but, even if we reconcile ourselves to this
+peculiar feature, anything in the nature of positive evidence of divine
+action is wholly lacking, and we can understand the whole process
+without it. The theory is merely a desperate and unfounded assertion of
+men who are determined that God shall not be left out.
+
+There is a further grave difficulty. One would imagine that the kind of
+paternal affection which is ascribed to God would have induced him to
+intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with
+the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the
+less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man.
+Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need
+judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even
+less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth
+and twentieth centuries seem able to dispense with his co-operation,
+while the ignorant and priest-ridden children of earlier ages could do
+little of themselves. The theologians who have found this new formula
+are of the more liberal school. They do not attribute all the blunders
+and crimes and failures of the Middle Ages to free will, to a sheer and
+deliberate obstinacy in clinging to evil. They realise the overpowering
+nature of the environment and the drastic discouragement by the clergy
+of anything like novelty or initiative in ethics. It was then that man
+needed God, if there is a God. But, on this theory, God argued with the
+academic wisdom of a medieval theologian; he concluded that medieval men
+were quite capable of originating modern ideas, and he would not
+co-operate until they did. The theory is preposterous in every respect.
+
+Finally, we have the very large class of candid or of hopelessly puzzled
+Christians who give up the matter as a mystery. They do not understand
+how this ruling of the universe which they seem to see clearly in stars
+and flowers should become so obscure or disappear altogether in the
+human order. They realise that, if this war were an isolated
+occurrence, they might imagine God holding his hand for a season, for
+some reason unknown to us; but they know that it is not an isolated
+occurrence: it is part of the human order of things. It has been
+preceded by other wars at intervals of every few years, and war itself
+is only one of a series of catastrophes and calamities that splash the
+human chronicle with innocent blood. They give it up, sorrowfully, and
+find a thin consolation in learned formulæ about the impossibility of a
+finite mind understanding an infinite mind, and so on: which give, as I
+say, thin consolation, for one may at least see that an infinite
+benevolence ought not to act worse than a moderate human benevolence.
+
+Now if there were any very strong evidence of divine ruling outside the
+human order, we might find a certain amount of logic in this position.
+The mystery of a God who moves the stars and inspires the bees, yet
+leaves man to his own unhappy impulses (after putting those impulses in
+him), would be, one imagines, painful enough; but if there were
+irresistible evidence that God does move the stars and quicken the bird
+and beast, we might be compelled to reconcile ourselves to that unhappy
+dilemma. There is, however, no such irresistible evidence. This is not
+the place to examine such evidence as is adduced. I must be content to
+recall the fact that it is all highly controverted; that theologians
+tear to pieces each other's "proofs" of the existence of God; and that a
+large and increasing body of cultivated men and women discard the
+evidence entirely. So that, in the last resort, the situation is this:
+on the one hand we have a number of very disputable suggestions, which
+are growing fainter in proportion as science investigates these matters,
+of divine action in stars and rocks and reptiles, and on the other hand
+we have a stupendous mass of suffering, starting millions of years ago
+at the very birth of consciousness and piled up mountains high in this
+year 1915, which no thinker has ever yet reconciled with the notion of a
+divine ruling of the life of man. This is a very grave and plain
+situation, and if the clergy have nothing more to say about it than to
+borrow from an ancient Hebrew certain offensive gibes at the unbeliever,
+or to offer us the kind of apologies we examined in the last chapter,
+one must conclude that they do not realise the situation. The war has
+terribly accentuated the most terrible difficulty they ever had to face.
+Whether there is intelligence manifested in nature is, after all, an
+academic question which does not profoundly stir the modern world.
+Whether there is benevolence, a moral personality, reflected in the
+course of man's history is the much more important question. And this
+appalling calamity will induce many to take a more candid view of the
+world-process and conclude that, as far as the critical eye can see,
+man's world seems to be left entirely to his own efforts, to his own
+crimes and blunders and aspirations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE
+
+
+If the observations I have made in the preceding chapters are even
+approximately just, the hope which many of the clergy express, that
+there will be a religious revival at the close of the war, is very
+singular. No doubt it means, on the whole, that some advantage to
+religion will be sought in the flood of genial and generous emotion
+which will surge through the country. In Germany and Austria, one
+imagines, religion will have a rough experience. The people who wrote
+and repeated constantly, "Gott strafe England"--which, by the way, is
+another proof that the general German attitude is theological rather
+than humanist--will have a few serious questions to put to the clergy,
+as well as to their secular rulers. In France, despite the reports of
+interested people, there will be little change. The nation, being
+overwhelmingly Rationalistic, relied on its 75-centimetre guns rather
+than on prayer, and will find its wisdom justified. But in England and
+Russia, and in the backward Slav countries, there will be mighty
+flag-waving in Church, and no doubt a great number of not very
+thoughtful people will conclude that the clergy and the Y.M.C.A. and the
+Salvation Army have behaved very nicely over the whole affair, and there
+will be, for a time, an increased attendance at church.
+
+We may suppose that this emotional storm will not last long, and the
+nation will settle down to face the bill, the empty chairs at home, and
+the disorganisation of its industries. Then will arise the questions I
+have been endeavouring to answer in this little book. The clergy behaved
+very well during the war, short of volunteering in any conspicuous
+number for active service; but what is the sense of this lofty message
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men" which never produces any
+result? The Churches are fairly eager to join in the work of peace now
+that it is being promoted by large associations of laymen; but where, in
+the name of heaven, were they during these "ages of faith" which they
+bemoan? God may conceivably have been at work somewhere among the
+batteries or the infantry of the Allies--it is so very difficult to
+analyse these things--but we should be infinitely more grateful if he
+had asserted his power earlier and spared us all the bloodshed. He may
+be a very stern schoolmaster, teaching us a valuable lesson by means of
+this war; but we were really quite open to conviction if he had sent us
+the lesson in a more humane form. A great many good people may have
+derived spiritual advantages from the war, but the price was stupendous,
+and we would rather they got their spiritual advantages in another way.
+
+These questions and reflections must surely arise, and they will lead to
+larger reflections. Men will perceive the antithesis I pointed out
+between all that is claimed for Christianity in Europe and the actual
+condition of Europe; between the supposed luminous traces of the finger
+of God in the non-human world and the complete absence of them from the
+human world. From the samples of clerical eloquence which we have
+examined, we can hardly suppose that the clergy will have great success
+in meeting the inquirers. An enormous proportion of their followers, of
+course, will not ask questions, or will be satisfied with anything in
+the nature of an answer. I heard a group of men discussing the subject
+in a rural ale-house, and the most intelligent man in the group, to
+whom, as an educated visitor, the natives looked up with respect, said:
+"War is God's way of purifying and bracing nations from time to time."
+This sort of stuff pacifies hundreds of thousands: like the stuff that
+Archbishop Carr found it possible to put before his Australian
+Catholics. But inquiry and reflection grow among the adherents of the
+Churches, and, although the Press generally refuses to bring books of
+this character to the notice of the public, and clergymen often stoop to
+the most despicable means to exclude them from bookstalls and shops,
+they seem to find a fairly large public to-day. Thinking is as needful
+an exercise for the mind as work is for the body, and the only plausible
+ground on which you can seek to suppress thinking about Christianity is
+the fear that it will not be good for Christianity.
+
+Then we shall have the next and inevitable question: What would you put
+in the place of Christianity? Young men in various parts of the country
+hurl that question at one as if it were really very serious, putting an
+end to all dispute. Any person who is quite candid and sincere about
+these matters can find the material for an answer easily enough. Take
+France. Forty years ago the nation was overwhelmingly Christian; to-day
+it is overwhelmingly non-Christian. It has not put anything in the place
+of Christianity, and has prospered remarkably. There is a legacy of what
+is called vice which comes down from earlier religious times, but any
+person who cares to examine criminal and other statistics, the only
+positive tests of a nation's health, will find that France has been
+extraordinarily successful without Christianity and without putting
+anything in its place. There are, it is true, moral lessons in its
+schools, but I would not claim that they are much responsible: the
+system is imperfect, and the teachers not well equipped. Take our ally
+Japan. The moral discipline of the nation, which, in spite of some
+recent deterioration through Western influence, is admirable, does not
+rest on religious foundations. Take London or any metropolis of modern
+Europe. The bulk of the people have ceased to receive any influence from
+the representatives of Christianity, yet there has been moral progress
+instead of deterioration. Those who speak of degeneration in London or
+Paris do not accurately know and estimate the state of those cities in
+more religious times.
+
+This experience might be enlarged indefinitely, but one or two instances
+will suffice for my purpose. The soundness of these instances which I
+quote I have established elsewhere, and the general truth to which I
+refer may be sufficiently gathered from the words of the clergy
+themselves. The rhetorical way in which they characterise our times is
+more or less typical of the carelessness of their judgments and the
+strength of their prejudices. One group of clerical writers, which
+generally includes the reigning Pope, speak in the darkest terms of our
+age and suggest that a sensible degeneration has followed the decrease
+of the influence of the Churches. Another group, considering the
+remarkable spread of idealism in our generation, the growing demand for
+peace, justice, and sobriety, claim that this moral progress, which they
+cannot deny, is due to some tardy recognition of the spirit of Christ:
+a strange contention, seeing that our age is less and less willing to
+hear the words of Christ and ascribes its sentiments to entirely
+different inspiration. Hence there are a few who frankly admit that the
+idealism of modern times is to them a rebuke and a mystery. One of these
+more sensitive religious writers once confessed to me that the fact that
+the times became better while the influence of Christianity grew less
+was to him a perplexing truth.
+
+The really honest social student, who does not measure his age by his
+prejudices, but fashions his theories according to the carefully
+ascertained facts, will try to discover the causes of this phenomenon.
+In those wide and varied areas where it is observed, we cannot say that
+anything has taken the place of Christianity. The Press sometimes
+flatters itself that it has taken the place of the pulpit, but opinions
+will differ in regard to its efficacy as a moral agency. On the whole,
+it is too apt to reflect the moral sentiments of the more reactionary,
+who are generally the most self-assertive, and it has no moral, as
+distinct from political, leadership. Then there are Ethical and kindred
+societies which hold "services" of a humanitarian character, and are to
+many people a substitute for the Christian Churches. Their influence is,
+however, restricted to a few thousand people in the whole country, and
+signs are not wanting that their usefulness will be only transitory. The
+experience of any careful observer is that the mass of people who cease
+to attend church desire and need no substitute whatever for
+Christianity. The Rationalist literature which many of them read is, as
+a rule, of a high idealist character; but here again the influence is
+very restricted. No organised influence is at work to any great extent
+as a successor to Christianity, yet it is indubitable that, as Christian
+influence wanes, the temper of the age improves.
+
+This improvement must have an adequate cause, and it would be merely
+another form of crude social reasoning and of sectarian prejudice to
+say, in the rich language of the older anti-clericals, that breaking
+"the fetters of superstition and priestcraft" led of itself to such a
+result. But this sanguine rhetoric does contain or obscure a certain
+truth. In plain human language, when you prevent a man from relying on
+the old traditional inspirations, he may for a time be tempted to act
+without inspiration. In the matter of his dealings with his fellows it
+is an undeniable fact that, on the whole, he has not been thus tempted.
+It is absurd to heap up all the contemporary instances of corruption in
+trade and politics, looseness in domestic life, and so on, unless you
+make a similar study of the vices and crimes of an earlier and more
+Christian generation, and carefully compare the two. It is not a
+question whether there is evil in our generation; it is a question
+whether there is more or less evil than in earlier generations. I must
+be pardoned for reiterating this, because, although this comparison is
+essential for forming an accurate judgment on the moral effect of the
+decay of Christianity, it is rarely instituted with the least pretence
+of rigour. I have sufficiently studied it in earlier works (especially
+_The Bible in Europe_), and will not repeat the facts. Cotter Morison,
+whom I quoted on an early page, was wrong in his expectation. The change
+from Christian to humanist inspiration is taking place without disorder
+and with increasing advantage.
+
+The solution of this apparent problem is really not obscure. If the
+genuine basis of human conduct needed an elaborate search--if it had to
+be revealed by a Deity or laboriously established by moral theologians
+or moral philosophers--no doubt the age of transition would be an age of
+disorder, and a very comprehensive educational organisation would be
+needed. But the true basis of human conduct is simple. There are, of
+course, Rationalists who feel that some very abstruse "science of
+ethics" has to be constructed as the solid foundation of conduct; but
+this has as little relation to the conduct of ordinary men as the
+learned pedants of the science of prosody have to ordinary speakers of
+prose. Experience is the real base and guide of conduct, and it forces
+itself on every man and woman, even on the child. "Do unto others as you
+would that they should do unto you" is the first principle of morals;
+and to inculcate it you need neither the thunders of Jupiter nor the
+impressive abstractions of a science of ethics: nor do you need any
+moral genius or philosophical skill to discover it. It is a rule of life
+that suggests itself spontaneously. It is a natural and prompt
+expression of the fact that our life is social: our acts have the
+closest relation to others besides ourselves. Now and again, perhaps, a
+man is tempted to assert his own personality, or seek his own
+gratification, in such a way as to ignore his fellows; but he is usually
+arrested before long by the simple experience that he himself suffers
+from the actions of others just as they may suffer from his conduct. It
+is a lesson of life which one needs no power of analysis to learn.
+
+And the chief reason why the abandonment of the old doctrines is
+proceeding without any moral degeneration is that this experience was
+really always the basis of general morality. We need not question--it
+would be absurd to question--that refined natures have received moral
+aid from their belief in the presence of God, or in a desire to please
+God by accepting the law of virtue as a declaration of his will; though
+we must be equally candid in admitting that men and women of this nature
+have not been observed to deteriorate when they sacrifice their
+religious beliefs, as thousands of them have done. On the other hand, we
+will hardly question that numbers of people of coarser nature have been
+deterred from evil-doing by dread of supernatural punishment. It is,
+however, notorious in the moral history of Europe that these religious
+beliefs have been consistent with a vast amount of transgression of the
+decalogue: more than we witness in any civilised country in our own
+time. How, then, are we to discover what were the real springs of
+conduct in the mass of ordinarily decent people? It seems to me that the
+only accurate method is to avoid theories and consider people in the
+flesh. Do our Christian friends--did we ourselves in Christian
+days--refrain from lying, dishonesty, injustice, cruelty, and injury,
+solely or mainly because God forbids them or will punish them? I have
+not met the man, except in the imaginative pages of religious
+controversy, who confessed that he would stoop freely to these things if
+there were no Christian prohibition. The mainspring of ordinary decent
+conduct in any educated community has always been a perception of its
+human and social value.
+
+The only line of the decalogue about which there is likely to be any
+dispute in this regard is that putting restraint on sexual relations. I
+have not to consider here a subject so remote from my immediate
+interest, and will observe only that any act which hurts either an
+individual or the social interest will as plainly come under a
+humanitarian law as the practice of lying: acts which inflict no injury
+and have been forbidden only on mystic grounds are not likely to remain
+on the moral code of the future. But I am concerned here with a definite
+issue, and need discuss general morality only in so far as that issue is
+affected.
+
+Here, at least, the way of the humanitarian is plain. Sermons on the
+brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God have been totally
+ineffective to prevent war and abolish militarism. There is something
+incongruous in the introduction into a modern peace-meeting of some
+clerical speaker who talks unctuously about the great promise and
+precept of Christianity. The meeting itself, being held nineteen
+centuries after the promise was made, is a sufficient indication of its
+futility. No progress was made or seriously attempted in the work of
+peace until a genuine human passion was substituted for that empty
+phraseology. The brotherhood of men was, in the Christian sense of that
+phrase, too abstruse and precarious a conclusion to be of use in such a
+struggle. The plain fact is that it was of no use, and is of no use
+to-day. There is, indeed, reason to think that we should make more
+progress if we entirely discarded figures of speech like "the
+brotherhood of men." The fact that we are all children of God, or
+children of Eve, or children of some Tertiary anthropoid, does not very
+obviously impose on us the duty not to take up arms in an international
+quarrel.
+
+The ultimate basis of morality is, as Schopenhauer said, sympathy,
+though in an advanced social order this sentiment approves itself to
+the intellect, and its requirements may be precisely formulated by
+reason. One is not sure whether there will not be more morality in the
+world when the word "morality," with all its mystic entanglements, is
+discarded, and we speak plainly of social law. Violence, the infliction
+of pain and injustice, is one of the most obvious infractions of social
+law, quite apart from any religious commandments. Its social evil is so
+obvious that the community has, at an early date in its development,
+elaborated a special machinery for restraining it, and has imposed
+penalties in this world, whatever it thinks about the next. There may be
+questions raised, and one can understand people who are confined to a
+religious environment feeling a genuine concern, about other sections of
+moral law; but it would be obviously absurd to think that a humanitarian
+ethic would fail here. There have been attempts in modern times to
+question the validity of ethical law altogether. In so far as this
+movement aims at stripping moral law of its mysticism and fearlessly
+investigating its traditional content, it is admirable and will grow;
+but in so far as these moral rebels would resent restraint of any kind,
+and pronounce the freedom of every individual impulse, they seem to
+overlook a factor of great importance--the impulse of retaliation. A
+pretty state of society we should have if such a theory were generally,
+or largely, carried into practice.
+
+But these are academic vagaries, like those of the mystic or the moral
+theologian. Whatever be the future fortune of Christian legends, men are
+not likely to sacrifice the peace and security of social life to such
+theories of freedom any more than they are likely to expose property to
+a general scramble. The instinct of sympathy is now growing deeper in
+every century. Most of the great improvements of social life (in its
+widest sense) during the nineteenth century, which we have inherited,
+were due to that development of sympathy. It matters not whether the
+reformer was Christian or non-Christian--Elizabeth Fry and Florence
+Nightingale or Robert Owen and John Stuart Mill--the impulse was
+sympathy with suffering fellow-humans. All the hope of improvement in
+the twentieth century looks to a continued growth of that sentiment. It
+becomes a veritable passion in certain natures, as long as there are
+large and cruel evils to redress; and this passion of a few leading
+spirits, communicating something of its fire to the colder mass, is the
+great cause of progress. Surely that is the correct interpretation of
+the progressive life of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries? Men
+realised that to cultivate sympathy because it was enjoined by religion
+was a more or less mercantile procedure: it was worth cultivating for
+its own sake.
+
+Here we have the reply to those who, unfamiliar with any but their own
+religious environment, ask what place there will be for sympathy in an
+intellectual or nationalistic age. It is a very grave error to suppose
+either that our age is becoming less emotional or that Rationalism has
+no place for emotions. In pursuing its task during the nineteenth
+century Rationalism was an intensely emotional movement. Mr G. K.
+Chesterton, in his _Victorian Age in Literature_, speaks of J. S. Mill's
+"hard rationalism in religion" and "hard egoism in ethics." Like very
+many other statements in that lamentable book, these are inexplicably
+unjust. Mill was so far from being "hard" in religion that he ended his
+days in a kind of sentimental theism; he was so far from being a "hard
+egoist" in ethics that he declared that he would burn in hell for ever
+rather than lie at the supposed bidding of a Deity. Robert Ingersoll,
+the most popular Rationalist of that age, was--I judge from his private
+letters, not his ornate speeches--a man of the most tender and fine
+sentiment. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that, because we do not
+admit emotion to be a test of the accuracy of statements of fact (as all
+religious dogmas claim to be), we do not find any room for emotion in
+life. Is the whole of man's life an affirmation about reality or
+criticism of such affirmation? This supposed "hardness"--I detest these
+vague phrases, but one knows what is meant--of the Rationalist temper is
+one of the strangest myths the clergy have invented.
+
+Reason not merely approves, but enjoins, the cultivation of sentiment.
+When the sentiment in question is one that shows a power of transforming
+life and impelling men to struggle against pain and evil, reason
+applauds it as one of the most valuable forces we can cultivate. Such,
+plainly, is the sentiment of sympathy. We look back to-day with horror
+on the industrial and social condition of England in the earlier part of
+the nineteenth century: the burdened lives and few gross pleasures of
+the workers, the horrible cellar-homes of the poor, the ghastly
+treatment of child-workers, the stupid and brutal herding of criminals,
+the tragedies of asylums and workhouses, the fearful political
+corruption and despotism, the subjection of women, the revolting
+proportions of the birth-rate and death-rate. We have still much to do
+to redeem our civilisation from medieval errors, but when one
+contemplates the social revolution that human sympathy has brought about
+in the life of England, one feels that this, and not the long-futile
+teaching of Christianity, is the hope of the future. Christian preaching
+of virtue has been individualistic. Even in our time the clergy hesitate
+and are divided in face of social problems which plainly involve moral
+principles. But the humanitarian ethic is essentially social, and this
+passion of sympathy is its chief root.
+
+We wish, then, not to substitute any creed or organisation for
+Christianity, but to sweep away these primitive or medieval speculations
+about life, and let the human mind and human heart increasingly devote
+themselves, directly, to human interests. In discussing the question of
+peace and war, the application is obvious. We enclose or dispatch the
+murderer, lest some fresh grave act of violence be perpetrated. We agree
+that the violent and premature termination of a life is the most serious
+transgression of social law that a man can perpetrate. Next to it we put
+rape, mutilation, the destruction of a man's home or fortune; all acts,
+in a word, that come nearest to it in threatening or causing the
+greatest desolation. Yet we have suffered, age after age, that every few
+years all these acts should be gathered into one mighty outrage and
+showered upon whole populations. The time will come when men will read
+with bewilderment the things that have been written about warfare in the
+nineteenth, and even the twentieth, century. The men of clear judgment
+and sound emotion of some coming age will see anguish rising, as vapour
+does from some tropical sea, from our vast battle-fields. They will read
+of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for
+Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors
+to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands
+of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and
+children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the
+superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and
+shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they
+will see that same generation in a few months grow dully indifferent to,
+if not actively supporting, the military system which invariably brings
+these horrors every few years upon the world. They will read of social
+aspiration spreading through our civilisation, and statesmen regretting
+that want of funds alone prevents them from remedying our social ills;
+and they will read how Europe in one year wasted in butchery the
+resources that might have renovated its disfigured civilisation, and the
+next year complacently shouldered its military burden, its annual waste
+of a thousand millions sterling, with the prospect of a costlier war
+than ever.
+
+In face of this situation the question, What would you put in place of
+Christianity? is a mere mockery. One can see some pertinence and use in
+the question: How shall we induce the Christian Churches to employ their
+still great resources in helping to bring on the reign of peace? But it
+is not to them that we now look for redemption. It is to the
+humanitarian spirit, the clearer reason, of our age. I have described
+the situation in terms of emotion, because thus it spontaneously rises
+before me; but it may be recorded in terms of pure reason. We maintain
+in Europe a machinery for settling international quarrels which costs us
+more than a thousand millions sterling annually, while we could erect at
+a cost of a few thousands annually an efficient machinery for dealing
+with those quarrels, and for a few millions we could add the machinery
+for carrying out its decisions. We boast that our civilisation is
+founded on justice; yet, of the two types of machinery for adjusting
+quarrels, we retain the one that is the least possible adapted for
+securing the triumph of justice and discard the one that is
+pre-eminently fitted to secure it. We flatter ourselves that we rise
+above the savage in enjoying security of life and property, and we
+retain this system though we know that, periodically, it will invade
+life and property on a scale that surpasses the experience of the savage
+as much as a Dreadnought surpasses a canoe.
+
+It is just as easy to state our situation in terms of reason as in terms
+of sentiment: it would not be easy to say in which guise it is ugliest.
+Let us talk no more nonsense about needing religion to help us to get
+rid of this atrocious nightmare. It drives both reason and sentiment to
+the brink of insanity. Both protest against it with every particle of
+their energy. Why Christianity failed to protest against it in fifteen
+hundred years may or may not be obscure; but there is no obscurity
+whatever about the probable effect on militarism and war of a
+cultivation of reason and sympathy.[3]
+
+Many a reform has been actually retarded by the use of rhetoric. An
+outpour of vehement language seems to release, both in the speaker and
+in the assenting audience, a part of that energy which ought to issue in
+action. It has been one of the grave blunders of the Churches that they
+thought their function ended with the eloquent announcement that men
+were brothers. We must be more practical. Now, while the imagination of
+the world is filled with the horrors of war, and sympathy is ready to
+fire us with a mighty energy, is one of the great opportunities of
+peace. One may trust that, after this experience, the Churches will
+awaken to the implications of their moral doctrine and set to work to
+impress it emphatically and repeatedly, as a moral duty, on their
+followers. It is, however, not impossible that, with all their
+scoutmasters and chaplains and services of thanksgiving for victory, a
+very large part of the clergy will find themselves so closely allied
+with militarism when the war is over, so confused in their appreciation
+of what it has done for us, that they will continue to mumble only
+general principles and halting counsels. In any case, in the cities and
+large towns of this kingdom, where are found the effective controllers
+of our destiny, the majority do not any longer sit at the feet of the
+clergy. Precise statistical observation has shown this.
+
+Let us remember that the one task before us is to inspire the _majority_
+in each civilised nation with a determination that the system shall end.
+The only practical difficulty of considerable magnitude is the economic
+difficulty: the disorganisation of the industrial world by suppressing
+war-industries and large standing armies. It is, however, foolish to
+regard this as an obstacle to disarmament, since--to put an extreme
+case--it would be more profitable to a nation to maintain these men in
+idleness than run the risk of another war. For disarmament itself what
+is needed is that half a dozen, at least, of the great Powers shall
+agree to submit _all_ quarrels to arbitration, and reduce their armies
+to the proportions of an international police, at the service of the
+international tribunal and for use (under its permit) against lower
+peoples who turn aggressive. No one doubts that this can be done when
+the Powers agree to do it. But for one reason or other, which I need not
+discuss, the Governments will probably not do this until a majority of
+the electorate indicate a resolute demand for it. The immediate task is
+to secure this majority by education; and the work of education will be
+best conducted by vast non-sectarian peace-organisations. The mixture of
+futile Christian phraseology and genuine humanitarian interests in some
+of these movements has been hitherto a grave disadvantage. The movement
+has been compelled to split into sectarian branches, and has
+proportionately lost efficacy. If the clergy insist on winning prestige
+for themselves, or respect and recognition for their doctrines, by
+acting in these bodies, they are again hampering the work of reform. A
+great national agitation, linked with similar agitations in other lands,
+avoiding Christian formulæ as well as anti-Christian reproaches, will
+alone secure the object.
+
+I confess--with ardent hope that I may be wrong--that I expect no
+immediate realisation of the reform. It may take years, even after the
+grim lesson that militarism has given us, to inspire the majority of our
+people with an unsleeping and irresistible demand, and the work will
+grow more arduous as the memory of the hardships of the war fades. On
+the day on which I write this I have listened to the conversation, in a
+train, of a wealthy, refined, and cultivated Churchwoman. "I said to my
+son when he set out," she observed, with a laugh, to her neighbour,
+"that it was far better for him to get shot than to die of diphtheria or
+something at home." If that sentiment, that obtuseness to the massive
+horrors of war even when a son was involved, is widespread, the outlook
+is dark. One fears that it is not very promising.
+
+The lady I quote would read these pages, if she could constrain herself
+to do so, with a genuine shudder. Abandon Christianity! She would
+volubly reel off the eloquent forecasts of the doom of society which she
+has heard from a hundred pulpits. Meantime she is one of the gravest
+obstacles (as a type of her class) to the removal from society of one of
+its most crushing burdens and most criminal usages. To me her class
+illustrates the limitations of Christianity, and it confirms me in the
+belief that we shall make more rapid progress without it. She was a lady
+of keen sympathies and of great activity for others: the kind of woman
+who, as she would put it, practised her Christianity. Yet in face of
+this mighty disorder she showed at once the failure of Christianity and
+the reason of it. Her genuine human sympathy was directed by an ancient
+and outworn code of duties. Where Christianity had delivered no clear
+message, the expanding of her sympathy was barred. War was part of the
+established order of things. She could even cheat her maternal sentiment
+with thin fallacies, because they reconciled her to what the Church had
+not condemned. She had never seen the vision of peace, never grasped the
+comparatively easy alternative to war.
+
+This, in general terms, is what one means by the expectation that a
+surrender of Christian doctrines will certainly not check the growth of
+sympathy, and is more likely to promote it. It will direct itself
+spontaneously to departments of suffering to which the Church had not
+directed it. But we should be foolish to rely on this free growth and
+spontaneous application of sympathy. It must be cultivated: our
+generation must be educated to a sense of its value. As far as the child
+is concerned, the need is plain. Children do not merely have veins of
+cruelty; they have, as comparative psychology knows, the blood and
+impulses of primitive man. The general impulse of a healthy boy is to
+exact an eye for an eye: the impulse which it is the supreme care of a
+modern State to curb in its citizens. To educate such children in
+military history, whether of ancient Jews or medieval Englishmen or
+modern Germans, is, as William II knows, the best means of maintaining
+war. As to the New Testament, its language is not addressed to children,
+its sentiments are often so obviously impracticable that it defeats the
+end of education, and its precepts and counsels are so emphatically
+based on a disputable reward in heaven that their ethic savours of a
+risky commercial speculation. We must abandon "Bible lessons," and teach
+children to be human.
+
+But for the work of education to end when the child leaves the school is
+one of the crudities of our elementary civilisation. The human material
+is just becoming fit for the efforts of the educator when the child
+leaves school, yet from that moment we leave it to the casual and
+largely pernicious influences of its environment. Some day, perhaps, our
+education department will be more seriously concerned about the youth
+and the adult than about impressing a few facts of history and geography
+on the memory of the child: even if it did no more than organise and
+direct the innumerable foundations and voluntary organisations which
+actually exist, and bring them into living and practical contact with
+our splendid museums and libraries and art-collections, a vast amount
+could be done in the education of the adult. Meantime a persistent,
+comprehensive, intensely earnest propaganda of peace is needed. Since I
+wrote a little work on those lines in 1899 I have had fifteen years'
+experience of preaching the gospel of peace, and know well how
+convincing are its arguments and how little it has to overcome except
+inertia. We need only to help the imagination of the mass of people; to
+put clearly before them the comparative easiness and the incalculable
+value of the change. Christianity has not tried and failed; it has not
+even tried. It has wasted its resources in generalities which have
+proved wholly futile. We must speak as men to men; and men will be more
+open to conviction when we plead that, not the supposed commands of a
+Galilean preacher of nineteen hundred years ago, but their own highest
+and most sacred instincts, bid them lay down their arms and inaugurate
+the age of international peace.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Service of Man_ (_6d._ edition), p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 2: As I write, the Press describes Canon Green of Burnley as
+saying that "the war is a divine judgment on the world--England for the
+last ten years has been God-forgetting, drunken, immoral."]
+
+[Footnote 3: Let me again guard myself against misrepresentation. Were I
+of military age, I should to-day be in the trenches. The men who, as
+long as the military system is retained, expose their lives in our
+defence have my entire respect and gratitude. It is the system I
+impugn.]
+
+
+Printed by Watts & Co., Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The War and the Churches, by Joseph McCabe</title>
+  <style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The War and the Churches, by Joseph McCabe</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The War and the Churches</p>
+<p>Author: Joseph McCabe</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 22, 2006  [eBook #18650]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Irma Spehar<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net/</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/toronto">http://www.archive.org/details/toronto</a>)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+	  Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+	  <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/warandchurches00mccauoft">
+	  http://www.archive.org/details/warandchurches00mccauoft</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>JOSEPH McCABE</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;"><small>[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]</small></p>
+<div style="text-align: center;">
+
+<span class="smcap">London</span>:<br />
+WATTS &amp; CO. <br />
+17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
+<br />
+1915</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WORKS_BY_THE_AUTHOR" id="WORKS_BY_THE_AUTHOR"></a>WORKS BY THE AUTHOR</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<i>Modern Rationalism</i> (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-<br />
+
+<i>Peter Abelard</i> (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.<br />
+
+<i>Saint Augustine and his Age</i> (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.<br />
+
+<i>Twelve Years in a Monastery</i> (Smith Elder), 3rd ed. 6<i>d.</i> and 1/-<br />
+
+<i>Life in a Modern Monastery</i> (Grant Richards). 6/-<br />
+
+<i>Life and Letters of G.&nbsp;J. Holyoake</i> (Watts), 2 vols. &pound;1/1/-<br />
+
+<i>Talleyrand</i> (Hutchinson). 14/-<br />
+
+<i>The Iron Cardinal</i> (Nash). 12/-<br />
+
+<i>Goethe</i> (Nash). 15/-<br />
+
+<i>A Candid History of the Jesuits</i> (Nash). 10/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Evolution of Mind</i> (Black). 5/-<br />
+
+<i>Evolution</i> (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-<br />
+
+<i>Prehistoric Man</i> (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-<br />
+
+<i>The Principles of Evolution</i> (The Nation's Library). 1/-<br />
+
+<i>The Decay of the Church of Rome</i> (Methuen), 2nd ed. 7/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Story of Evolution</i> (Hutchinson), 2nd ed. 7/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Empresses of Rome</i> (Methuen). 12/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Empresses of Constantinople</i> (Methuen). 12/6.<br />
+
+<i>Church Discipline</i> (Duckworth). 3/6.<br />
+
+<i>Can we Disarm?</i> (Heinemann). 2/6.<br />
+
+<i>In the Shade of the Cloister</i> (pseudonymous&mdash;Constable). 6/-<br />
+
+<i>The Bible in Europe</i> (Watts). 3/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Religion of Woman</i> (Watts), 2nd ed. 6<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>Woman in Political Evolution</i> (Watts). 6<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>Haeckel's Critics Answered</i> (Watts), 2nd ed. 6<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>From Rome to Rationalism</i> (Watts), 4th ed. 4<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>The Origin of Life</i> (Watts). 1/-<br />
+
+<i>Secular Education</i> (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-<br />
+
+<i>The Martyrdom of Ferrer</i> (Watts), 2nd ed. 6<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>The Religion of the Twentieth Century</i> (Watts). 1/-<br />
+
+<i>A Hundred Years of Education Controversy</i> (Watts). 3<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>The Existence of God</i> (Watts). 9<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>Shakespeare and Goethe</i> (Cole). 6<i>d.</i><br />
+
+<i>George Bernard Shaw</i> (Kegan Paul). 7/6.<br />
+
+<i>The Religion of Sir Oliver Lodge</i> (Watts). 2/-<br />
+
+</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>The searching crisis through which the nation is passing must have the
+effect of securing grave consideration for many aspects of our life and
+institutions. We have already traversed the acute stage of suspense, and
+are gradually becoming sensible of these wider considerations. It was
+natural that for a prolonged period the disturbance of our economic
+conditions, the anxiety for the safety of our nation in face of an
+appalling menace, the personal concern of millions about the lives of
+sons or brothers who have bravely responded to the call, should keep our
+thoughts enchained to the daily or hourly fortunes of the field of
+battle. Now that the initial disorder has been allayed and we have
+attained a quiet and reasonable confidence in the issue, we turn to
+other and broader aspects of this mighty event of our generation. How
+comes it that the most enlightened century the world has yet seen should
+be thus darkened by one of the bloodiest and most calamitous wars that
+have ever spread their awful wings over the life of man? Where is all
+the optimism of yesterday? Must we reconsider our reasoned boast that
+our civilisation has lifted the life of man to a level hitherto
+unattained? Is there something entirely and most mischievously wrong
+with the foundations of modern civilisation?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>A dozen such questions will press for an answer, but it will be granted
+that one of the most urgent and most interesting of the many grave
+considerations which the war suggests is its relation to the prevailing
+creeds and standards of conduct. The war coincides with an advanced
+stage of what is called the spread of unbelief. In each of the nations
+of Europe which are engaged in this awful struggle complaints have been
+made every year for the last two or three generations that Christianity
+is losing its moral control of the white race. In the cities, especially
+in the capitals, of Europe there has been a proved and acknowledged
+decay of church-going; and, however much we may be disposed to think
+that these millions who no longer attend church retain in their minds
+the beliefs of their fathers, the slender circulation of religious
+literature makes it plain that the vast majority of them do not, in
+point of fact, receive either the spoken or written message of the
+Christian Church. In the great cities&mdash;and it is undoubted that the life
+of a nation is mainly controlled by its cities&mdash;there has been an
+increasing reluctance to listen to the authoritative exponents of the
+Christian gospel.</p>
+
+
+<p>A number of the clergy have very naturally noticed and stressed this
+coincidence. Prelates of high authority have, as we shall see, even
+declared that the war is a scourge deliberately laid on the back of
+mankind by the Almighty on account of this spreading infidelity. As a
+rule, the clergy shrink from advocating a theory which has such grave
+implications as this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> has, and they are content to submit the more
+plausible suggestion, that the decay of the Christian standard of
+conduct in the mind of a large proportion of our generation accounts for
+this tragic combat of nations. A distinguished Positivist writer, Mr. J.
+Cotter Morison, commenting in the last generation on the decay of
+Christian belief, expressed some such concern in the following terms:</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"It would be rash to expect that a transition, unprecedented for
+its width and difficulty, from theology to positivism, from the
+service of God to the service of Man, could be accomplished without
+jeopardy. Signs are not wanting that the prevalent anarchy in
+thought is leading to anarchy in morals. Numbers who have put off
+belief in God have not put on belief in Humanity. A common and
+lofty standard of duty is being trampled down in the fierce battle
+of incompatible principles."<a href="#Footnote_1_1"><small>[1]</small></a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is true that in the work from which I quote<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> the learned, if
+somewhat nervous, Positivist does not, by his masterly survey of the
+moral history of Europe, afford us the least reason to think that we
+have really deteriorated from the standard of conduct set us by earlier
+generations, but his words do tend to press on our notice the claim of
+many writers, clerical and non-clerical, that we are returning from
+Christianity to Paganism, from a settled moral discipline to an
+unhealthy moral scepticism. Can one entirely and safely reconstruct the
+bases of personal and national conduct in one or two generations?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>This very plain and plausible theory is, however, exposed to criticism
+from other points of view. The clergy as a body are not at all willing
+to concede that the decay of belief has spread as far as the theory
+would suggest. In order to suppose that the life of Europe has, in a
+matter of the gravest importance, been directed by a non-Christian
+spirit, one must assume that at least the majority in each nation have
+deserted the traditional creed. It is by no means conceded or
+established that the fighting nations have ceased to be predominantly
+Christian. Indeed, if we confine the awful responsibility for this
+tragedy, as the evidence compels us, to Germany and Austria-Hungary, we
+are casting it upon the two nations which have been the chief
+representatives in Europe of the two leading branches of the Church.
+Most assuredly no prelate of either country would admit that his nation
+has ceased to be Christian or surrendered its life to non-Christian
+impulses; and in our own country we have frequently been assured of late
+years that the real power of Christianity was never greater.</p>
+
+
+<p>Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
+practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
+becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
+responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
+not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
+and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> departed from some
+admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
+religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
+arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
+in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
+not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
+which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
+Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
+assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it an
+element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
+employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends also
+to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be prolonged
+into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the Thirty
+Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance of
+ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
+modern war. Nor may we forget that it is the modern spirit which has
+claimed some alleviation of the horrors of the field, and that the
+majority of the nations engaged in the present struggle have observed
+the new rules.</p>
+
+
+<p>These considerations show that the problem is less simple and more
+serious than is often supposed, and I set out to discuss each of them
+with some fullness. That the war has <i>no</i> relation to the Churches will
+hardly be claimed by anybody. Such a claim would mean that they were
+indifferent to one of the very gravest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> phases of human conduct, or
+wholly unable to influence it. Nor can we avoid the issue by pleading
+that Christianity approves and blesses a just defensive war, and that,
+since the share of this country in the war is entirely just and
+defensive, we have no moral problem to consider. I have assuredly no
+intention of questioning either the justice of Britain's conduct or the
+prudence of the Churches in adapting the maxims of the Sermon on the
+Mount to the practical needs of life. If and when a nation sees its life
+and prosperity threatened by an ambitious or a jealous neighbour, one
+cannot but admire its clergy for joining in the advocacy of an efficient
+and triumphant defence. But this is merely a superficial and proximate
+consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
+it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
+the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
+an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
+moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
+Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding of
+the conduct of Europe.</p>
+
+
+<p>But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
+influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most
+interesting questions suggested by the relation of the war to the
+prevailing religion. The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day
+raises again in its most acute form the problem of evil and Providence.
+More than two thousand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> years ago, as <i>Job</i> reminds us, some difficulty
+was experienced in justifying the ways of God to men. The most
+penetrating thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once
+more with the problem, as if no word had been written on it; and he
+wrestled in vain. A century and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake
+destroyed forty thousand Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal
+unsuccess, to vindicate Providence with the faint hope of the Deist.
+Modern science, prolonging the sufferings of living things over earlier
+millions of years, has made that problem one of the great issues of our
+age, and this dread spectacle of <i>human</i> nature red in tooth and claw
+brings it impressively before us. Is the work of God restricted to
+counting the hairs of the head, and not enlarged to check the murderous
+thoughts in the human brain? Nay, when we survey those horrid stretches
+of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated
+bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of
+their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile
+marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose
+flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic
+feeling alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions
+of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss&mdash;how can we repeat
+the ancient assurance that God <i>does</i> count the hairs of the head and
+mark the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars
+only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> those momentous
+little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?</p>
+
+
+<p>These are reflections which must occur to every thoughtful person in the
+later and more meditative phases of a great war, when the eye has grown
+somewhat weary of the glitter of steel and the colour of banners, when
+the world mourns about us and the long lists of the dead and longer list
+of the stupendous waste sober the mind. Something is gravely wrong with
+our international life; and, plainly, it is not a question <i>whether</i>
+that international life departs from the Christian standard, but <i>why</i>,
+after fifteen hundred years of mighty Christian influence, it does so
+depart. Is the moral machinery of Europe ineffective? One certainly
+cannot say that it has not had a prolonged trial; yet here, in the
+twentieth century, we have, in the most terrible form, one of the most
+appalling evils which human agency ever brought upon human hearts. We
+have to reconsider our religious and ethical position; to ask ourselves
+whether, if the influence of religion has failed to direct men into
+paths of wisdom and peace, some other influence may not be found which
+will prove more persuasive and more beneficent.</p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">J.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Easter, 1915.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAP.</td><td align='left'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a> THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES</td><td align='center'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a> CHRISTIANITY AND WAR</td><td align='center'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a> THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY</td><td align='center'><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a> THE WAR AND THEISM</td><td align='center'><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a> THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE</td><td align='center'><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h2>THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES</h3>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>The first question which the unprejudiced inquirer will seek to answer
+is: How far were the Churches able to prevent, yet remiss in using their
+influence to prevent, the present war? There is, unhappily, in these
+matters no such thing as an entirely unprejudiced inquirer. Our
+preconceived ideas act like magnets on the material of evidence which is
+submitted to us, instinctively selecting what bears in their favour and
+declining to receive what they cannot utilise. Nowhere is this more
+conspicuous than in the field of religious inquiry, nor is it confined
+to either believers or unbelievers. There has been too much mutual
+abuse, and too little attention to the fact that the mind no less than
+the mouth has its palate, its impulsive selections and rejections. One
+can meet the difficulty only by a patient and full examination of the
+pleas of both parties to a controversy.</p>
+
+
+<p>And the first plea which it is material to examine is that, since it is
+claimed that all the nations engaged in the war are Christian nations,
+one may accuse them collectively of moral failure. From the earliest
+days<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> of the Christian religion it was the boast of those who accepted
+it that it abolished all distinctions of caste and race. In the little
+community which gathered round the cross there was neither bond nor
+free, neither Greek nor Roman. This cosmopolitanism was, in fact, a
+natural feature of religious movements at the time, and was due not so
+much to their intrinsic development as to the political circumstances of
+the world in which they spread. All round the eastern and northern
+shores of the Mediterranean a great variety of races mingled in every
+port and every commercial town, and it was the policy of the powerful
+Empire which extended its sway over them all to overrule their national
+antagonisms. When, in the earlier period, Jew and Greek and Egyptian had
+maintained their separate nationalities, hostility to other races had
+been a very natural social quality, an inevitable part of the spirit of
+self-preservation in a race. When the great Empires had conquered the
+smaller nationalities or the decaying older Empires, this mutual
+hostility was moderated, and, as the vast movements of population which
+marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new era filled the
+Mediterranean cities with extraordinarily mixed crowds, mutual
+friendship became the more fitting and more useful social virtue. A good
+deal of the old narrow patriotism had been due to the fact that each
+nation had its own god. In the new Roman world this theological
+exclusivism broke down, and the priests of a particular god, scattered
+like their followers among the cities of the eastern world, began to
+seek a cosmopolitan rather than a nationalist following. In the temple
+of each of the leading gods of the time&mdash;Jahveh, Serapis, Mithra, and so
+on&mdash;people of all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> races and classes were received on a footing of
+equality. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man spread all over that
+cosmopolitan world.</p>
+
+
+<p>When the old world, to the south and east of the Mediterranean, was
+blotted out of history, and Europe in turn became a group of conflicting
+nationalities, racial hatred was revived and in its political and social
+aspects the doctrine of the brotherhood of man was virtually forgotten.
+But the Christian Church had embodied that doctrine in its sacred
+writing, and was bound to maintain it. In its ambition of a universal
+dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races
+of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world
+and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this
+change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of
+insincerity to the Christian gospel. In the older days there had been
+political unity with a great diversity of religions; now there was
+religious unity spread over a great diversity of antagonistic political
+bodies. Men were brothers from the religious point of view and, only too
+frequently, deadly enemies from the political point of view. The discord
+was made worse by the feudal system which was adopted. Even within the
+same race there was no brotherhood. In effect the clergy as a body did
+not insist that the noble was a brother of the serf, and did not exact
+fraternal treatment of the serf. Thus the phrase, "the brotherhood of
+man," which had been a most prominent and active principle of early
+Christianity, became little more than a useless theological thesis.</p>
+
+
+<p>The solution of the difficulty would, of course, have been for the
+clergy, as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood,
+to apply that doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> boldly to every part of man's conduct; to
+pronounce that all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a
+humane means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the
+next chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great
+reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of
+modern times favoured a fresh assertion of the doctrine of brotherhood.
+Great as the power of sincere moral idealism has always been, the
+historian must recognise that economic changes have had a most important
+influence upon the development or acceptance of moral ideas. Just as in
+earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned by changes
+in their material surroundings, so man's moral development has been
+profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political changes.</p>
+
+
+<p>The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern worker
+were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
+important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
+asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers
+from the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them,
+and even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
+social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
+brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical
+facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in
+their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood,
+the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative
+that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the
+whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
+social and religious sense.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
+political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong <i>prima
+facie</i> case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
+It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
+socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
+with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
+on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
+relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
+criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
+revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
+mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
+that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
+<i>guilt</i>, but the <i>social effect</i>, which we regard. And from this point
+of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
+Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
+the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
+and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
+industry and commerce, no less a sum than &pound;9,000,000,000; and it will
+certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
+besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
+relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will
+come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
+have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
+order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
+destructions of the entire social order of nations.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> in connection
+with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
+the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal
+conduct, they have no <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i>. Few of them to-day will plead
+that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they
+regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of
+our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such
+importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is
+abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what
+they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were
+slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.</p>
+
+
+<p>In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
+their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
+of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
+declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that
+they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however
+much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for
+years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half
+of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the
+greatest war in history. Now it is notorious that the Christian Churches
+have done little or nothing, in proportion to their mighty resources and
+influence, to avert this danger. No collective action has been taken,
+and relatively few individuals have used their influence to moderate or
+obviate the danger. The supreme head of the most powerfully organised
+and most cosmopolitan religious body in the world, an institution which
+has its thousands of ministers among each of the antagonistic peoples&mdash;I
+mean the Church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> of Rome&mdash;gave his attention to minute questions of
+doctrine and administration, and bemoaned repeatedly the evil spirit of
+our age, but issued not one single syllable of precise and useful
+direction to the various national regiments of his clergy in connection
+with this terrible impending danger. The heads or Councils of the
+various Protestant bodies were equally remiss. Here and there individual
+clergymen joined associations, founded by laymen, which endeavoured to
+maintain peace and to secure arbitration upon quarrels, and one Sunday
+in the year was set aside by the pulpits for the vague gospel of peace.
+But in almost all cases these movements were purely secular in origin,
+and the few movements of a religious nature have been obviously founded
+only to keep the idealism linked with a particular Church, have had no
+great influence, and have been too vague in their principles to have had
+any effect upon the growing chances of a European war. There is no doubt
+that the Churches have remained almost dumb while Europe was preparing
+for its Armageddon.</p>
+
+
+<p>I speak of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be
+confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a
+considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have
+even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of
+initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more
+leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian spirit, yet it
+would be absurd to restrict the criticism to them. The various Christian
+bodies, as a whole, have confronted a very grave and imminent danger
+with remarkable indifference, although that danger could become an
+actual infliction only by seriously immoral conduct on the part of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+nation. They saw, as we all saw, the vast armies preparing for the fray,
+the diplomatists betraying an increasing concern about the relations
+between their respective nations, the press embittering those relations,
+and a pernicious and provocative literature inflaming public opinion. We
+all saw these things, and knew that a war of appalling magnitude would
+follow the first infringement of peace. Yet I think it will hardly be
+controverted that the Churches made no serious effort to avert that
+calamity from Europe. They were deeply concerned about unbelief, about
+personal purity, about the cleanness of plays and books and pictures,
+even about questions of social reform which a rebellious democracy
+forced on them; but they took no initiative and performed no important
+service in connection with this terrible danger.</p>
+
+
+<p>That is the indictment which many bring against Christianity, and we
+have now to consider the general defence. I will examine later a number
+of religious pronouncements about the war, and will discuss here only a
+few general pleas which are put forward as a defence against the general
+indictment.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is, in the first place, urged that the moral and humanitarian
+teaching which the Christian Churches never ceased to put before the
+world condemned in advance every departure from the paths of justice and
+charity; that it was not the fault of Christianity if men refused to
+listen to or carry into practice that teaching. But at no period in the
+history of morals has it sufficed to lay down general principles.
+Everybody perceives to-day, not only that slavery was in itself a crime,
+but that it was essentially opposed to the Christian morality. Yet, as
+no Christian teacher for many centuries ventured to apply the principle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+by expressly denouncing slavery, the institution was taken over from
+Paganism by Christian Europe and lasted centuries after the fall of the
+Roman Empire. The Church itself had vast numbers of slaves, and later of
+serfs, on its immense estates. Leo the Great disdainfully enacted that
+the priesthood must not be stained by admitting so "vile" a class to its
+ranks, and Gregory the Great had myriads of slaves on the Papal
+"patrimonies." So it was with the demand for social reform which
+characterised the nineteenth century. To-day Christians claim that their
+principles sanctioned and gave weight to those early demands of reform,
+yet their principles had been vainly repeated in Europe for fifteen
+hundred years, and, when the people themselves at last formulated their
+demands in the early part of the nineteenth century, it is notorious
+that the clergy opposed them. The teaching of abstract moral principles
+is of no avail. Man is essentially a casuist. Leave to him the
+application of your principles, and he will adapt almost any scheme of
+conduct to them. The moralist who does not boldly and explicitly point
+the application of his principles is either too ignorant of human nature
+to discharge his duty with effect or is a coward. The plain fact is that
+the preaching of justice and peace throughout Europe has been steadily
+accompanied by an increase in armaments and in international friction.
+It had no moral influence on the situation.</p>
+
+
+<p>A more valid plea is that we must distinguish carefully between the
+nations which inaugurated the war and the nations which are merely
+defending themselves, and we must quarrel with the Christian Churches
+only in those lands which are guilty. It may, indeed, be pleaded that,
+since each nation regards itself as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> acting on the defensive and uses
+arguments to this effect which convince its jurists and scholars no less
+than its divines, there is no occasion at all to introduce Christianity.
+Most of us do not merely admit the right, we emphasise the duty, of
+every citizen to take his share in the just defence of his country,
+either by arms or by material contribution. Since there seems to be a
+general conviction even in Germany and Austria that the nation is
+defending itself against jealous and designing neighbours, why quarrel
+with their clergy for supporting the war?</p>
+
+
+<p>When the plea is broadened to this extent we must emphatically reject
+it. There has been too much disposition among moralists to listen
+indulgently to such talk as this. When we find five nations engaged in a
+terrible war, and each declaring that it is only defending itself
+against its opponent, the cynic indeed may indolently smile at the
+situation, but the man of principle has a more rigorous task. Some one
+of those peoples is lying or is deceived, and, in the future interest of
+mankind, it is imperative to determine and condemn the delinquent. There
+is no such thing as an inevitable war, nor does the burden of great
+armaments lead of itself to the opening of hostilities. It is certain
+that on one side or the other, if not on both sides, there is a terrible
+guilt, and it is the duty of Christian or any other moralists, whether
+or no they belong to the guilty nations, sternly to assign and condemn
+that guilt. It is precisely on this loose and lenient habit of mind that
+the engineers of aggressive war build in our time, and we have seen, in
+the case of neutral nations and of a section of our own nation, what
+chances they have of succeeding. They have only to fill their people and
+the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> mendacious, and
+many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and
+declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a
+fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or
+more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or
+other, acquiesced in a crime.</p>
+
+
+<p>The plea is valid only to this extent, that the guilty nations in this
+case were notoriously Germany and Austria-Hungary, and therefore one
+cannot pass any censure on British Christians for supporting the war. I
+have in other works dealt so fully with the guilt of those two nations
+that here I must be content to assume it. The general and incessant cry
+of the German people, that they are only defending their Empire against
+malignant enemies, must be understood in the light of their recent
+history and literature. No Power in the world had given any indication
+of a wish to destroy Germany; there were, at the most, a few
+uninfluential appeals in England for an attack on Germany, but solely on
+the ground that it meditated an attack on England, and the accumulated
+evidence now shows that it did meditate such an attack. England did not
+desire an acre of German ground. France had assuredly not forgotten
+Alsace and Lorraine, but France would have had no support, and would
+have failed ignominiously, in an aggressive campaign to secure those
+provinces. On the other hand, an immense and weighty literature, which
+is unfortunately very little known in England, has familiarised Germany
+for fifteen years with aggressive ideas. The most authoritative writers
+claimed that, as they said repeatedly, "Germany must and will expand";
+and leagues which numbered millions of subscribers propa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>gated this
+sentiment in every school and village. A definite demand was made
+throughout Germany for more colonies and a longer coast-line on the
+North Sea; and it was in relation to this ambition that England, France,
+and Russia were represented&mdash;and justly represented&mdash;as Germany's
+opponents. England, in particular, was described as the great dragon
+which watched at the gates of Germany and grimly forbade its
+"development." It is in this sense that the bulk of the German people
+maintain that their action is defensive.</p>
+
+
+<p>In passing, let me emphasise this peculiar economic difference between
+the four nations. Russia had a vast territory in which her people might
+develop. France had no surplus population, and had a large colonial
+field for such of her children as desired adventure abroad or would
+escape the competition at home. England had, in Canada and Australasia
+and South Africa, a magnificent estate for her surplus population. None
+of these Powers had an economic ground for aggression. Germany was
+undoubtedly in a far less fortunate position, and had an overflowing
+population. Six hundred thousand men and women (mostly men) had to leave
+the fatherland every year, and, as the colonies were small and
+unsatisfactory, they were scattered and lost among the nations of the
+earth. The proper attitude toward Germany is, not to gratify the cunning
+of her leaders by superficially admitting that she was not aggressive,
+but to understand clearly the very solid grounds of her desire for
+expansion.</p>
+
+
+<p>Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here.
+Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of
+the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own
+industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such
+expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would
+suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war.
+Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were
+meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were
+utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not
+mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the
+other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or
+individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary
+principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were
+desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to
+assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany
+is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to
+defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for
+twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools;
+they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist
+propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive
+war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that,
+in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity
+should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext
+for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their
+passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and
+Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of
+justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass
+the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> at
+the grave risk of a European war, Austria dishonestly annexed Bosnia and
+Herzegovina; they gave their tacit or open consent when Austria,
+refusing mediation, declared war on Serbia and inaugurated the titanic
+struggle; and they have passed no condemnation on the infamies which the
+Magyar troops perpetrated in Serbia.</p>
+
+
+<p>I am concerned mainly with the action or inaction of the Churches in
+this country, but it is entirely relevant to set out a brief statement
+of these facts about Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Christian religion
+was on trial in those countries as well as here. It failed so
+lamentably, not because there is more Christianity here than in Germany
+and Austria, not because the national character was inferior to the
+English and less apt to receive Christian teaching, but because the
+temptation was greater. Until this war occurred, no responsible
+traveller ever ventured to say that the German or Austrian character was
+inferior to the British. It is not. But the economic difficulties of
+Germany and the political difficulties (with the Slavs) of
+Austria-Hungary laid a heavier trial on those nations, and their
+Christianity entirely failed. Catholic and Protestant alike&mdash;for the two
+nations contain fifty million Catholics to sixty million
+Protestants&mdash;were swept onward in the tide of national passion, or
+feared to oppose it.</p>
+
+
+<p>One might have expected that at least the supreme head of the Roman
+Church would, from his detached throne in Rome, pass some grave censure
+on the outrages committed by Catholic Bavarians in Belgium or Catholic
+Magyars in Serbia. Not one syllable either on the responsibility for the
+war or the appalling outrages which have characterised it has come from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+him. The only event which drew from him a protest&mdash;a restrained and
+inoffensive remonstrance&mdash;was the confinement to his palace for some
+days of my old friend and teacher, Cardinal Mercier! To the stories of
+fearful and widespread outrage, even when they were sternly
+authenticated, he was deaf. One knows why. If Germany and Austria fail
+in this war, as they will fail, the Catholic bodies of Germany and
+Austria, the strongest Catholic political parties in Europe, will be
+broken. Millions of the Catholic subjects of Germany and Austria will
+pass under the rule of unbelieving France or schismatical Russia. So the
+supreme head of the Roman Church wraps himself nervously in a mantle of
+political neutrality and disclaims the duty of assigning moral guilt.</p>
+
+
+<p>On us in England was laid only the task of defending our homes and our
+honour. It is in those other countries that we most clearly see
+Christianity put to the test, and failing deplorably under the test. I
+do not mean that there was no opportunity here for the Churches to
+display their effectiveness as the moral guides of nations. In those
+fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly
+the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They
+did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the
+iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of
+their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I
+do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective
+armament, in England while the rest of the world remains armed. As long
+as we retain the military system instead of an international court, the
+soldier's profession is honourable, and the man who voluntarily faces
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> horrors of the field is entitled to respect and gratitude. But in
+every country there was an agitation for the <i>general</i> abandonment of
+militarism and the substitution of lawyers for soldiers in the
+settlement of international quarrels. Had the Churches in every country
+given their whole support to this agitation, and insisted that it is
+morally criminal for the race as a whole to prolong the military system,
+we might not have witnessed this great catastrophe.</p>
+
+
+<p>Before, however, I press this charge against the Christian bodies, let
+me discuss the third plea that may be urged in defence of the Churches.
+It is the plea of those who are so eager to disclaim responsibility that
+they are willing to allow an enormous decay of religious influence in
+the modern world. You have repeatedly told us, they say to the
+Rationalist, that Christianity has lost its hold on Europe. You speak of
+millions who no longer hear the word of Christian ministers, but who
+<i>do</i> read Rationalist literature in enormous quantities. Very well, you
+cannot have it both ways. Let us admit that the nations of Europe have
+become non-Christian, and we cast on your non-Christian influence the
+burden of responsibility for the war.</p>
+
+
+<p>This language has been used more than once in England. It leaves the
+speaker free to assume that in England, whose action in the war we do
+not criticise, the nation remains substantially Christian, while in
+Germany and Austria the Churches have lost more ground. Indeed, one may
+almost confine attention to Germany. Profoundly corrupt as political
+life has been in Austria-Hungary for years, there is no little evidence
+in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last
+moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria
+hesitated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was
+Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its
+terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism
+and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in
+London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship.
+It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population
+attend church on Sundays. In other large towns of Germany the condition
+is, as in England, proportionate. Almost in proportion to the size of
+the town is the aversion of the people from the Churches.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is absolutely impossible in the case of Germany to determine, even in
+very round numbers, how many have abandoned their allegiance to
+Christianity, though, when one remembers the enormous rural population
+and the high proportion of believers in the smaller towns, it seems
+preposterous to suggest that the country has, even to the extent of one
+half, become non-Christian. But I am anxious to do justice to this plea,
+and would point out that it is the educated class and the men of the
+large cities who control a nation's policy. The rural population&mdash;the
+general population, in fact&mdash;follows its educated leaders. Now there is
+no doubt that in Germany, as elsewhere, this body of the population&mdash;the
+middle class and the workers of the great cities&mdash;has very largely lost
+the traditional belief. The workers of Berlin are solidly Socialistic,
+which means very largely anti-clerical. And I would boldly draw the
+conclusion that the responsibility for the war is shared at least
+equally by Christians and non-Christians. The stricture I have passed on
+the Churches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised
+bodies with a definite moral mission,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> were peculiarly bound to protest
+against the obvious political development of their country, and they
+entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the
+responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and
+Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have
+cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the
+first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real
+control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion&mdash;I
+should be disposed to say at least one half&mdash;are not Christians, or are
+Christians only in name.</p>
+
+
+<p>While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
+in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
+rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
+principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
+opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
+religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
+ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
+as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
+there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
+educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
+Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
+the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
+cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
+humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
+cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
+that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
+monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> and
+Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald&mdash;all men of high moral
+idealism&mdash;gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
+this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents
+of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the
+Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to
+assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration,
+but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the
+influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in
+any degree facilitated the war.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Christian who regards all these non-Christian influences as "Pagan,"
+and feels that a "return to Paganism" explains the essential immorality
+of Germany's conduct, usually has a grossly inaccurate idea of Paganism.
+Whatever may be said of sexual developments in modern and ancient times,
+we shall see that the Roman writers held principles which most decidedly
+made for peace and brotherhood and justice. In point of fact, the
+majority of the German writers who have been responsible for the
+education of Germany in war-like ideas have been Christians. The Emperor
+himself, who is mainly responsible because of his deliberate
+prostitution of German schools to militarist purposes since 1891, will
+hardly be described as other than Christian; certainly every prelate or
+minister in Germany would vehemently resent such a description.
+Treitschke, who is probably the best known in England of the Imperialist
+writers, definitely bases his appalling conception of life on Christian
+principles, and claims that he is acting from a sense of the divine
+mission of Germany. General von Bernhardi uses precisely the same
+Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who,
+for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive
+ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I
+should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a
+single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has
+contributed to their pernicious gospel.</p>
+
+
+<p>Probably the one German writer in the mind of those English people who
+speak of Germany's return to Paganism is Friedrich Nietzsche. It is true
+that Nietzsche was bitterly anti-Christian, and he has probably had a
+greater influence in Germany, in spite of his strictures on the country,
+than many seem disposed to allow. German booksellers have recently drawn
+up a statement in regard to the favourite books of soldiers in the
+field, and it appears that Nietzsche's <i>Thus Spake Zarathustra</i> is
+second on the list&mdash;leagues ahead of the Bible. But to conclude from
+this that the anti-moral doctrine of the Pagan Nietzsche is the chief
+source of the outrages committed is one of those slipshod inferences
+which make one despair of Christian literature.</p>
+
+
+<p>In the first place, Goethe is even more popular with the troops than
+Nietzsche, and, although Goethe too was a Pagan, his teaching was the
+very antithesis of crime, violence, injustice, or hypocrisy. No nobler
+human doctrine was ever set forth than in the pages of his <i>Faust</i>, the
+first on this list of favourite books. In the second place, this fact at
+once warns us of a circumstance which we might have taken for granted:
+in the knapsacks of the overwhelming majority of the soldiers there are
+no books at all. It is the minority who read; and it is quite safe to
+assume that this thoughtful minority are not the minority who have
+disgraced German militarism. Thirdly&mdash;and it should hardly be necessary
+to make this observation&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would
+have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some
+ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he
+still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour
+out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially
+upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that
+Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he
+had only disdain, and it is folly to suppose that his aristocratic
+philosophy has been accepted among them as a gospel.</p>
+
+
+<p>Nietzsche has had a considerable influence on the more thoughtful
+reading public in Germany, yet even here one has to make reserves in
+charging him with a part in the preparation of the country for an
+aggressive war. His peculiar art and temperamental exaggerations make it
+impossible for any but a patient few to grasp his teaching accurately,
+and are peculiarly liable to mislead the less patient. When, therefore,
+he stresses&mdash;as most anti-Socialists do&mdash;the Darwinian struggle for
+existence, when he assails the humanitarian and Christian doctrine of
+helping the weak, when he calls into question the received code of
+morals, and when he extols self-assertion and strength of will, his
+fiery words do lend some confirmation, which he assuredly never
+intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much
+averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching,
+which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt
+for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We
+must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to
+the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von
+Bernhardi's admiring references to his philosophy sufficiently show
+this.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>But Nietzsche's very limited influence on German thought cannot
+reasonably be quoted as justification of the common saying that Germany
+had deserted Christianity for Paganism. Had such a statement been made
+before the war began, our divines would have indignantly repudiated it.
+The truth is that all classes&mdash;Christian and non-Christian&mdash;have yielded
+fatally to the pernicious interpretation which interested politicians,
+soldiers, manufacturers, and Jingoistic writers have put on the real
+economic needs of the country. Of the Socialist and Catholic parties, in
+particular, the two most powerfully organised bodies in Germany, we may
+say that, in deserting their ideals, they have been partly deceived into
+a real belief that Russia and England sought their destruction, and they
+have partly yielded to that very old and familiar temptation&mdash;the desire
+to retain their numerical strength by compromising with their
+principles. In justice to the Socialists it should be added that that
+party has furnished the only men and journals in Germany to raise any
+protest against the madness of the nation. One of the most repulsive
+moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most
+liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the
+people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has
+transpired time after time that the <i>Vorw&auml;rts</i> has protested against
+this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or
+religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially
+sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no
+Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is
+reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the
+official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian
+protest, from end to end of the campaign.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and
+non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real
+difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of
+the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity
+be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for
+this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the
+natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages
+ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official
+teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice
+of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries
+ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to
+assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric
+patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard
+the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral
+development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of
+nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is
+surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like
+Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by
+our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his
+opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in
+this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more
+deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of
+tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood,
+of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole
+kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race.
+War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of
+civilisation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The question of real interest is, therefore, the historical question.
+Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very
+penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours
+did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the
+participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain
+of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally persuading
+themselves that the action of their country is just and necessary. But
+from the day when we awoke to an adult perception of the life of the
+world we have been aware that the established system of settling
+international quarrels was barbaric and might in any year lead to just
+such a catastrophe. How comes it that such a system has survived fifteen
+hundred years of profound Christian influence? Whatever we may think of
+the clergy of to-day, with the more powerful clergy of yesterday we have
+a grave reckoning. The Rationalist is a new thing in Europe. The very
+name is little more than a century old, and until a few decades ago only
+a few thousand would accept it. Not from such a new and struggling
+movement do we ask why this military system has dominated Europe for
+ages and has only in recent times been seriously challenged. During
+those ages the Churches suffered none but themselves to pretend to a
+moral influence over the life of the nations, nor were there many bold
+and independent enough to make the claim. It is of the Churches we ask
+why this appalling system has taken such deep root in the life of Europe
+that it resists the most devoted efforts to eradicate it. It is not
+<i>this</i> war, but war, that accuses the Churches. We are entangled in a
+system so widespread and so subtle that, when a war occurs, each nation
+can persuade itself that it is acting on just grounds. It is the system
+which interests us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHRISTIANITY AND WAR</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The day will come when the student of human development will find war
+one of the most remarkable institutions that ever entered and quitted
+history. Civilisation took it over from barbarism; barbarism from the
+savage; the savage from the beast. So we are accustomed to argue, but we
+must make a singular reservation. The lowest peoples of the human
+family, which seem to represent primitive man, do not wage war, and are
+little addicted to violence. They seem by some process of natural
+selection to have obtained the social quality of peacefulness and mutual
+aid. There was, in a sense, a stage of primitive innocence. As, however,
+these primitive peoples grew in numbers and were organised in tribes, as
+they obtained collective possessions&mdash;flocks and pastures and hunting
+grounds&mdash;they came into collision with each other, and all the old
+pugnacity of the beast awoke. Skill, and even ferocity, in war became a
+valuable social quality, and we get the stage of the savage. The
+barbarian, or the man between savagery and civilisation, was still
+compelled to fight for his possessions. He was usually surrounded by
+fierce savage tribes. The civilised man in turn was surrounded by
+savages and barbarians, and needed to fight. So through thousands of
+years of development of moral sentiment and legal procedure the
+primitive method of the beast has been preserved.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>But I am not writing a history of warfare, and need not describe these
+stages more closely, or examine the new sentiment of imperialist
+expansion which gave civilisations a fresh incentive to develop methods
+of warfare. The point of interest is to determine at what stage it might
+have been possible for the moral element to intervene and bid the
+warriors, in the name of humanity, lay down their arms; at what stage
+the tribunal which men had set up to adjudicate between the quarrels of
+individuals might have been enlarged so as to be capable of arbitrating
+on the quarrels of nations.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now this was plainly impossible in the early centuries of the present
+era, and it is therefore foolish to ask why Pagan moralists did not do
+what we expect Christian moralists to have done. I have already
+mentioned, and have fully described elsewhere, how humanitarian
+sentiments were generally diffused throughout the old Gr&aelig;co-Roman world.
+There is not a phrase of the New Testament which has not a parallel
+among the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The great
+fusion of peoples in the Roman Empire begot a feeling of brotherhood,
+and, by a natural reaction on years of vice and violence, there was a
+considerable growth of lofty and tender, and often impracticable,
+sentiments. Moralists urged men to avoid anger, to bear blows with
+dignity, to greet all men as brothers, even to love their enemies. Plato
+and Epictetus and Plutarch and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius urged these
+maxims as forcibly as Christ did. The Stoic religion or philosophy,
+which guided Emperors and lawyers, and had a very wide influence in the
+Roman world, was intensely and quite modernly humanitarian. Its
+principal expo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>nents condemned slavery and promoted a remarkable spread
+of philanthropy.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was, however, not possible for the Stoics to condemn war. Some of the
+more ardent and less practical humanitarians of the time did this, but
+no alert Roman citizen could advocate the abolition of the legions. The
+Empire was completely surrounded by barbarians who would rush in and
+trample on its civilisation the moment the fence of spears was removed.
+From the turreted walls in the north of England, where men watched the
+Picts and Scots, to the deserts of Mesopotamia&mdash;from the banks of the
+Danube and Rhine to the spurs of the Atlas&mdash;it was essential to maintain
+those bronzed legions who guarded the civilised provinces from
+marauders. With those outlying barbarians no treaty was possible or
+sacred; no legal tribunal would have protected those frontiers from the
+men who looked covetously on the fertile fields and comfortable cities
+of the Roman provinces. From the first to the fourth century Rome
+fought, not for its expansion, but for its preservation against these
+increasing enemies; and it was the final intensification of the pressure
+in the Danube region by the arrival of enormous hordes of barbarians
+from Asia which precipitated the final catastrophe. Paganism had never
+the slightest opportunity to abandon the military system, and only those
+who are totally unacquainted with Roman history can wonder why it did
+not make the attempt. It would have been a crime to abandon the
+civilised provinces to barbarism.</p>
+
+
+<p>This was the essential position of the Roman Empire: the civil wars of
+the fourth century, by which its military system was abused, need not
+be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> considered here. And the student of history must recognise with
+equal candour that the new Christianity, which succeeded Paganism in the
+fourth and fifth centuries, was equally powerless to abolish warfare.
+What we may justly blame is that the triumphant Christianity of the
+fourth century did not merely sanction the use of arms in defence of
+civilisation; it employed them in its own interest. The earlier
+Christians had exasperated the Romans by refusing to bear arms in the
+service of the Empire, plain as the need was. To a slight extent this
+was due to an aversion from the shedding of blood; for the most part
+military service was refused because it was saturated with Pagan rites.
+When the Empire became Christian, this objection was removed, and the
+Christians freely entered the army. Unhappily, the Christian body
+deteriorated with the new prosperity and base instincts were indulged.
+It is an undoubted historical fact, recorded by St. Jerome himself, that
+the election of Pope Damasus, his friend and benefactor, was accompanied
+by bloody and fatal riots. From undoubted historical sources we know
+that the Christian mob compelled the Prefect of Rome to fly from the
+city, and there is very serious evidence (in a document written by two
+Roman priests) that Damasus employed the swords and staves of his
+supporters to secure his position. Damasus and subsequent Popes then
+obtained or sanctioned the use of the Roman soldiers for the suppression
+of heresy and schism and Paganism, and Christianity was installed by
+violence throughout the Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire things were
+even worse. Violence became the customary device in the seething
+religious quarrels of the time, and, literally, tens of thousands lost
+their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> lives. The Byzantine or Greek Christianity entered upon a record
+of crime and violence which disgraced it for many centuries.</p>
+
+
+<p>This development did not augur well for the application of Christian
+principles to warfare. We may, however, observe at once that for many
+centuries the Roman Church had not the slightest chance of establishing
+peace in Europe. The destruction of the Roman Empire and disbanding of
+its armies made an entirely new situation in Italy. The Popes were, for
+the most part, good men, but they did not dream at that time of
+controlling the counsels of kings and dictating affairs of State. Even
+the story of Pope Leo the Great overawing the King of the Huns, Attila,
+and turning his army away from Italy, is a mere legend of medieval
+writers, and is at variance with the nearer authorities. The northern
+tribes themselves were to a great extent, and for some centuries, of the
+Arian faith, and took no advice from Rome. In a word, it would be stupid
+to expect Christian leaders of the early Middle Ages to press the cause
+of peace. The northern peoples, who would in time form the nations of
+Europe, were essentially violent and warlike, and would have recognised
+no pacific counsels in that imperfect stage of their religious
+development.</p>
+
+
+<p>Where the historian may and must censure the Church is in its adoption
+of militarism for its own purposes. Pope Gregory the Great found Italy
+in a chaotic and pitiful condition, and no doubt he acted, on the whole,
+rightly in organising its military defence. The more serious
+circumstance was that he began to receive immense estates, as gifts or
+legacies, in all parts of Italy as the property of the Roman Church, and
+from that time either a Papal army or the employ<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>ment of the army of
+some friendly monarch was necessary in order to protect these estates.
+With the confirmation and consolidation of these estates into a kingdom
+under Charlemagne in the ninth century the Papacy completed its moral
+aberration. Most of the Popes were still men of good character, and they
+no doubt persuaded themselves that, since the income of these estates
+was needed for the fulfilment of their spiritual task, it was proper to
+defend them by the sword. But casuistry of this kind has never prospered
+indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal
+development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which
+rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence on Europe. The Papacy
+became a princedom to attract the covetous and the ambitious, and the
+line of Popes sank so low by the tenth century that the grossest
+characters were able to occupy the chair of Peter at a time when the
+nations of Europe were sufficiently advanced to be susceptible of a
+sincere moral influence. The record of the Papacy, from the ninth
+century to the nineteenth, contains on almost every page a bloody
+struggle for the temporal power. The most religious and most eminent of
+the Popes, such as Gregory VII and Innocent III, were the most prompt to
+set in motion the machinery of war in defence of their territories or in
+punishment of rebels against their authority. Not one of them was in a
+position to bid kings disband their armies, or ever dreamed of enjoining
+them to do more than observe a few days' truce or keep their swords from
+each other in order to save them for the common enemy of Christendom.</p>
+
+
+<p>It would be useless to speculate about the date when the new nations of
+Europe had become sufficiently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> civilised to hear a gospel of peace. The
+idea of superseding the military system of Europe by a juridical system
+occurred to no Christian leader, and therefore we need not consider what
+prospect it might have had of realisation. The Christian gospel of
+meekness had become a mockery: even the great abbeys, in which the
+gentler and more religious were supposed to be immured, had their
+troops, and abbots and bishops, and very often Papal Legates, appeared
+at the head of armies. Two Popes, John X and Julius II, marched
+themselves at the head of their troops. Cardinals had their suites of
+swordsmen, and the castles of the Roman aristocracy were at times strong
+fortifications from which war of the most ferocious and unscrupulous
+character was waged. Christendom was steeped in violence; only a gentle
+saint or bishop here and there caught a futile vision of a world of
+peace. Every man was armed against possible trouble with his neighbour;
+every noble had his retainers and kept them well exercised; every prince
+was free, as far as the spiritual authorities were concerned, to covet
+and bloodily exact the lands of his neighbour. The noble, of either sex,
+found supreme delight in jousts which the modern sentiment finds as
+inhuman as a sordid quarrel of <i>Apaches</i> over a mistress; the peasants
+found a corresponding pleasure in the play of quarter-staves or the
+combats of dogs and cocks.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is, as I said, little use to speculate about the chances of a gospel
+of humanity in such a world. The overwhelming majority of priests and
+prelates made no effort whatever to restrain the prevailing violence.
+The elementary duty of any profound moral agency was to protest without
+ceasing, even if the protest was unavailing. It is not at all clear that
+it would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> been unavailing. The power of the Popes was beyond that
+of any other hierarchy known to history, and at least the moral
+education of Europe would have proceeded less slowly, and war would have
+been abolished centuries ago, if there had been any serious, collective,
+and authoritative enforcement of Christian principles. There was not,
+and to this silence of the clergy during those long ages of their power
+we owe the maintenance in Europe to-day of the regime of violence. They
+were so far from enjoying moral inspiration in this respect that they
+were amongst the first to bless the banners and swell the coffers of an
+aggressive monarch, and they gave the military system a final
+consecration by employing it repeatedly in the interests of the Church.</p>
+
+
+<p>All that one can plead in mitigation of this deep historical censure of
+the medieval Church is that the frontiers of Christendom were for
+centuries threatened by the Turk and the Saracen. The old need of
+protecting civilisation by arms had almost disappeared. Few and feeble
+peoples remained outside the range of Christian civilisation after the
+tenth century. Armies were maintained only in the interest of criminal
+ambition or for the settlement of disputes which ought to have been
+submitted to judges. The menace of the Turk, with his hostile religion,
+was, of course, a just ground for armaments, but a few nations generally
+bore the whole brunt of his onset. Whatever religious feeling may make
+of the great Crusades, which drew to the east armies from all parts of
+Europe, secular history must dismiss them as appalling blunders. The few
+advantages they brought to European culture cannot seriously be weighed
+against the terrible sacrifice of lives and the even more terrible
+consecration of militarism. In a word, the menace of the Turk<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> could
+have been met admirably by such an arrangement as we are advocating in
+Europe to-day: the maintenance of a small force by each nation for
+common action, under the direction of a supreme legal tribunal, against
+nations which would not obey the common law of peace. But we need not
+seriously discuss the influence of the Turk on the system. The last
+phases of the struggle, when the selfish nations and the ambitious
+Papacy spent their time in idle mutual recrimination and left the
+Hungarians and Poles to do all the work, justify us in dismissing that
+element. Kings and republics maintained armies for purely selfish
+purposes, for brutal aggression and defence against aggressors; and not
+a prelate in Europe had any moral repugnance to the system, or ventured
+to condemn it, especially as the Church used the same agency in defence
+of its own temporal interests.</p>
+
+
+<p>With the development of the Papal power and the advance of the peoples
+of Europe the opportunity of peace became greater, but the spiritual
+authority pledged itself more and more deeply to the military system.
+The Popes aspired&mdash;as Gregory VII and Innocent III repeatedly state&mdash;to
+control the temporal as well as the spiritual affairs of Europe, to
+transfer crowns when they thought fit, to direct invasions and military
+expeditions against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand
+boasts (<i>Ep.</i> vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask
+Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the
+Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its
+sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to
+bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal
+throne, he vehemently claimed that his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> action had made England a fief
+for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two
+greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they
+carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement
+of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most
+militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set
+armies&mdash;even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe&mdash;in motion
+to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of
+deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions of
+neighbouring kings.</p>
+
+
+<p>The rise of heresy and of protests against the corruption of the Papacy
+was another very grave pretext of the Church to support the military
+system. In the days of Gregory VII a body of Puritans known as the
+Patareni spread over the north of Italy, and Rome encouraged a few
+soldiers to lead armed mobs against them and drown their idealism in
+blood. Innocent III has a more terrible stigma on his record. The
+Albigensians, an early type of Protestants, were spreading in the south
+of France, and the Pope sanctioned a "crusade"&mdash;an expedition, largely,
+of looters and cut-throats&mdash;against them from all parts of France. The
+appalling deceit practised by the Papal Legate and sanctioned by the
+Pope, the ferocity of the campaign, and the desolation brought on one of
+the happiest and most prosperous provinces of France, may be read in any
+history of the thirteenth century. Tens of thousands of men, women, and
+children were savagely put to death. And this was only the beginning of
+the Papal war on heresy, which from the thirteenth century never ceased
+to spring up in Europe until it won its right of citizenship in the
+Reformation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Even more vehemently was war urged against the Moors, then
+the most civilised people in Europe.</p>
+
+
+<p>In face of this notorious history of Europe during the long course of
+the Middle Ages it is now usual for Catholic apologists to plead that
+the blood of the barbarian still flowed in the veins of the Christian
+nations and men were not yet prepared to listen to the message of peace.
+This plea cannot for a moment be admitted in extenuation of the Church's
+guilt. The clergy had themselves no conception of the criminality of
+war, and did not rise above the moral level of their age. Here and there
+a saint or a prelate raised a feeble voice against the violence of men,
+but we do not estimate an institution by the words of an occasional
+member, especially if they are at variance with the official conduct and
+the general sentiment. On the other hand, to boast that the clergy at
+times enforced a temporary cessation of fighting (the "Truce of God")
+only increases our appreciation of their guilt. The men who enforced
+that Truce gave proof at once of their power and of their perception of
+the un-Christian nature of warfare. But they were unwilling to condemn
+outright a machinery which they might employ at any moment in defence or
+advancement of their own interests. Had the Church been a serious moral
+influence in Europe, had it been true to the message in virtue of which
+it had grown rich and powerful, it would have protested unceasingly
+against this reign of violence. It was not a great moral influence. The
+grossness and illiteracy of the people, the appalling immorality of the
+clergy and monks and nuns, and this almost entire failure to apply
+Christian or ordinary human principles to the worst feature of the life
+of Europe, are terrible offsets to the little good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> it achieved. Europe
+was steadily educated and encouraged, century after century, in the
+shedding of blood.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Protestant is at times disposed to dismiss the whole sordid story
+with the remark that this Roman Church was not Christianity at all. He
+contrives to overlook the serious difficulty that, if the Roman Church
+did not represent Christianity from the sixth century to the sixteenth,
+there was, contrary to the promise of Christ, no Christianity in Europe
+for a thousand years; and he surrenders all the wonderful art of the
+Middle Ages (as he ought) to entirely non-Christian forces. That,
+however, does not concern me here. The slightest recollection of history
+would warn the Protestant that the Reformation brought no improvement
+whatever, as far as this reign of violence is concerned. The forces set
+up by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation fought each other for
+some decades with the comparatively peaceful weapons of mutual abuse and
+heated argument. When it was perceived that these weapons were of no
+avail, there was the customary appeal to the sword. In the historical
+documents which tell the life of Pope Paul IV we see the Papacy and the
+Jesuits urging the Catholic princes to lead out their armies. Heresy was
+to be extinguished in blood; and, seeing how many millions in the north
+had by that time embraced the heresy, there can have been no illusion as
+to the magnitude of the oceans of blood that would be required to drown
+it. So Europe entered upon the horrors of the Thirty Years' War
+(1618-1648), which put back the civilisation of Germany for more than a
+hundred years and utterly ruined some of the small principalities. The
+population of Bohemia alone fell from three millions to less than a
+million. Nearly every nation in Europe was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> involved, and the war was
+conducted with all the brutality of the older medieval warfare.</p>
+
+
+<p>The fact that political as well as religious ambitions were engaged in
+the Thirty Years' War does not affect my argument. In so far as
+religious sentiment was responsible&mdash;and it will hardly be questioned
+that it had a large share in the Thirty Years' War&mdash;we find a fresh
+consecration by Christianity itself of the use of the sword. But the
+main point we have to consider is that the new spiritual authorities
+were no more inclined than the old to declare that warfare was opposed
+to Christian principles. The last three centuries have been as full of
+aggressive war as the three centuries which preceded, but there was no
+protest by Christian ministers either in Protestant England and
+Scandinavia or in Catholic France and Austria. It was the period when
+the modern Powers of Europe were building up their vast dominions, and
+no one who is acquainted with the story can have any illusion as to the
+application to that process of what are now described as clear Christian
+principles.</p>
+
+
+<p>This is precisely the plaint of modern Germany. We seek, they say, to do
+merely what England and France&mdash;it were indiscreet to mention
+Austria&mdash;did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were
+vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their
+civilisation over backward lands. They appealed solely to the right of
+the sword, and all the Christian authorities in Europe&mdash;the bishops of
+William and of Anne, the bishops of Louis XIV, the bishops of Peter the
+Great&mdash;had not a single syllable to say against the right of the sword.
+The various branches of the Christian Church were at that time
+singularly unanimous in accommodating their principles to imperialist
+and aggressive warfare. Now that you have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> obtained all that you
+need&mdash;the aggrieved Teuton says&mdash;now that I in turn would expand and
+colonise, you discover that this imperialist aggression is supremely
+opposed to Christian principles.</p>
+
+
+<p>On some such meditations, in part, the German bases his conviction of
+the hypocrisy and perfidy of the English character. He is, of course,
+entirely wrong. A real change has taken place in the moral sentiment of
+this country; a change so real that when, in South Africa, the nation
+entered upon a war which many regarded as aggressive and merely
+acquisitive, there was a very widespread revolt. The cynic might
+genially observe that it is not difficult to retire from evil-doing and
+cultivate lofty principles when your fortune has been made, but it is
+important to realise this change and understand its significance. There
+is, no doubt, a sound human element in the cynic's observation. It <i>is</i>
+easier to recognise moral principle when the period of temptation is
+over. Every thoughtful and humane Englishman will make allowance for the
+less fortunate position of Germany, and not foolishly pride himself on
+his own superiority of character. The fact remains, however, that there
+has been a real moral improvement in England and France, and it would
+now be impossible for those nations to enter upon the aggressive and
+nakedly ambitious wars which they were accustomed to undertake before
+the nineteenth century. We have a genuine abhorrence of the "lust for
+land" which has impelled Germany to plunge Europe into war. But until a
+century or two ago that lust for land was considered a legitimate
+appetite in Europe, and the clergy crowded with the people to greet the
+warriors who came home with the news that they had added, by the sword,
+one more province to our spreading Empire.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>That this change of heart is not merely a feeling that we have no
+further need of aggression, and would ourselves suffer by the aggression
+of others, could easily be proved, if it were necessary. In the same
+period of change we abolished the duel, and there was no material
+advantage in discovering the immorality of the duel. We abolished
+dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and other brutalising
+spectacles. We undertook a reform of our industrial and penal systems
+which, however imperfect it be, was very considerable in itself, and was
+inspired solely by motives of humanity. There was a general and marked
+improvement of public sentiment, and it is as part of this improvement
+that we now find a universal condemnation of aggressive war and a
+widespread demand for the entire abolition of war. The construction of
+English history and English character on the lines of Mr. G.&nbsp;B. Shaw may
+be entertaining, and may save considerable trouble of research, but it
+does not conduce to sound judgment. The laments of social pessimists and
+of certain religious controversialists are never supported by accurate
+knowledge. Every social historian who gives evidence of knowing the
+evils of the England of a century ago as well as the England of to-day
+admits that there has been a great moral advance.</p>
+
+
+<p>I will examine in the next chapter certain comments of religious writers
+and speakers on this advance. Here I wish to determine the facts with
+some clearness. It has not been necessary for me to discuss the medieval
+and the early modern period with any fullness. There is no dispute about
+the features of those periods. They were ages of violence, of incessant
+and frankly aggressive war, of unrestrained ambition. The smallest
+pretext sufficed for a monarch, if his forces and finances were in
+order, to invade his neighbour's territory and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> annex as much of it as
+he could hold by the sword. Frederic the Great and Napoleon did not
+introduce new ideas into Europe; they attempted to revive medieval ideas
+in a changing world. Austria in its annexation of Bosnia and
+Herzegovina, Germany in its ambition to annex Belgium and the colonies
+which other Powers have laboriously cultivated, are following their
+example. They are not inventing new forms of criminality; they are not
+returning to Pagan ideals: they are reverting merely to ideals which
+were accepted throughout Europe for more than a thousand years. In the
+more brutal features of war to which they have descended they are even
+more emphatically reverting to the Middle Ages. The Romans did not
+commit such outrages at the command of educated officers. Medieval
+Christians did: the record of Papal warfare, down to the "Massacre of
+Perugia" in 1859, is as deeply stained as any by these abominable
+methods.</p>
+
+
+<p>My further point, that the Christian Church or Churches made no serious
+resistance to the prevailing brutality, is just as easy to establish. It
+is a sheer travesty of argument to put forward the gentle exhortations
+of a Francis of Assisi as characteristic of the Christian Church when
+the Pope of the time, one of the most powerful and conscientious Popes
+of all time, Innocent III, was threatening or directing the movements of
+ferocious armies all over Europe. Most assuredly there were among the
+numbers of fine characters who appeared in Christendom in the course of
+a thousand years many who deeply resented the prevailing violence. But
+when we speak of the Church, we speak of its official action and its
+predominant sentiment. The official action of the Popes was, during all
+that period, to make the same use as any terrestrial monarch of the
+service of soldiers; they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> failed, from Gregory the Great to Pius X, to
+recognise one of the supreme moral needs of Europe. The bishops of the
+Church of England and the heads of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches
+did not prove to have any sounder moral inspiration in this respect. It
+was left to despised bodies like the Friends, who were hardly recognised
+as Christians, and to rare individuals to protest against the system
+which has brought such appalling evil on Europe.</p>
+
+
+<p>In the nineteenth century the moral sentiment of Europe began to advance
+more rapidly than it had previously done, and the idea of substituting
+arbitration for war began to spread. The history of this reform has not
+yet been written, as far as I can discover, but it is hardly likely that
+any will be bold enough to suggest that the idea was due to
+Christianity. After the Napoleonic wars, at least, Europe was ripe for
+such a reform. I do not mean that public feeling in Europe was prepared
+for the idea. It would have met with a very considerable degree of
+resistance, and would have generally been conceived as the dream of an
+amiable fanatic. Such resistance makes the duty of the moralist or the
+reformer all the more pressing, and it is merely amazing to hear the
+earlier Christian clergy exonerated on the ground that the world was not
+prepared to receive a message of peace from them. They did not try the
+experiment because it did not occur to them, or because they were too
+closely dependent on the monarchs of the earth to question the wisdom of
+their arrangements. Europe was, in point of fact, quite ripe for the
+change in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and there would
+assuredly be no war to-day if the Churches had had the moral inspiration
+and the moral courage to insist on it. The frontiers of the nations were
+(except in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the case of Italy and Poland) defined with a fair show of
+justice, and the time had come to disband armies and submit any future
+quarrel to arbitration: to retain only a small standing army in each
+country for the defence of its colonial frontiers against tribes which
+do not respect arbitration, or for the enforcement of the decisions of
+the central tribunal. The conditions were almost as favourable for such
+a change in 1816 as they are to-day, or will be in 1916, and it is
+another grave point in the indictment of Christianity that it had no
+inspiration to demand that change. The bishops of England no less than
+the bishops of Rome were deeply concerned about the rise of democracy
+and the spread of unbelief, and they joined with the monarchs in
+enforcing a system of violent repression. For the larger and more real
+need of Europe they had no feeling whatever, and militarism entered upon
+its last and most terrible phase: the stage of national armies and of
+means of destruction prepared with all the fearful skill of modern
+science.</p>
+
+
+<p>As the nineteenth century proceeded, humanitarianism attained clearer
+conceptions and more articulate speech. The scheme of substituting legal
+procedure for military violence was definitely put before the world. It
+is not necessary, and would be difficult, to trace the earliest
+developments of this idea. On the one hand, I find no claim that it was
+put forward by representatives of Christianity; on the other hand,
+literary research among the records of the early Rationalist movements
+in this country has shown me that the idea was familiar and welcome
+amongst them. No doubt the aversion of the Friends from bloodshed had
+some influence, and we find representatives of that noble-minded Society
+active in more than one of the early reform-movements. But, as far as I
+can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> discover, it was Robert Owen who first definitely advanced the idea
+of substituting arbitration for war, and it was repeatedly discussed
+among the "Rational Religion" Societies&mdash;which were not at all
+religious&mdash;that he founded or inspired in various parts of the country.
+The immense influence which he obtained in the thirties and forties
+enabled him to direct public attention to the reform.</p>
+
+
+<p>This early history is, however, as yet vague and unstudied, nor do we
+need to enter into any ungenerous struggle about priority. It is enough
+that the idealist scheme was well known in England long before the
+middle of the nineteenth century. Did the Christian Churches adopt and
+enforce it? Here, at least, no minute research is needed. The Christian
+bodies failed lamentably and totally (apart from the heterodox Friends)
+even to recognise the moral and humane greatness of the idea when it was
+definitely presented to them. It is only in the last few years that a
+Peace Sunday has&mdash;at the suggestion of lay associations&mdash;been adopted in
+the churches and chapels of England. It is only in quite recent times
+that bishops and ministers have stood on peace-platforms and advocated
+the reform. And even to-day, when peace associations founded by laymen
+have been endeavouring for decades to educate the country, no branch of
+the Christian Church has officially and collectively decreed that
+Christian principles enjoin the reform; no Pope or Archbishop or Church
+Council has supported it with a stern and official injunction that
+Christian and moral principle demands that all the members of the
+particular Church shall subscribe to and work for the reform. Even at
+this eleventh hour, when the issue of peace or war confronts the whole
+of mankind, one notices hesitation, reserve, ambiguity. During the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+fateful years between 1900 and 1914, when the nations were, in the eyes
+of all, preparing the most appalling armaments ever known in history,
+when men were speaking freely all over Europe of "the next war" and the
+terrific dimensions which modern science and modern alliances would give
+to it, the various branches of the Christian Church adhered to their
+ancient and futile practice of preaching general principles (as far as
+national conduct is concerned), and had little practical influence on
+the development.</p>
+
+
+<p>I am not unaware of the small movements among the clergy for cultivating
+international clerical friendship, or of the extent to which individual
+clergymen have co-operated in the various arbitration movements. That is
+only a feeble discharge of a small part of their duty. Had Leo XIII or
+Pius X issued a plain and explicit Encyclical on the subject, and
+directed his vast international organisation of clergy to labour
+wholeheartedly for its realisation, who can estimate what the result
+would have been? Had the clergy of Germany issued a stern and collective
+denunciation of the Pan-German and Imperialist literature which was
+instilling poison into every village of the country, can we suppose that
+it would have been without avail? Had the Archbishops and Bishops of
+England, and the leaders of the Free Churches, definitely instructed
+their people that the pacifist ideal was not merely in accord with
+Christian principles, but was one of the most urgent and beneficent
+reforms of our time, would the English people have passed as
+inobservantly as it did through the five years of preparation for a
+great war?</p>
+
+
+<p>It is no part of my plan to analyse this deplorable failure of the
+Churches as moral agencies. The explanation would be complex, and is now
+superfluous. The clergy were, like the majority of their fellows,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+obsessed by the military system and unable to realise the possibility of
+a change. In part they were deluded by the catch-words of superficial
+literature. They had an idea that we were asking England to lower its
+armament while the rest of the world increased its armament. They
+muttered that "the time was not ripe," not realising that it was their
+business to make it ripe. They had been accustomed for ages to preaching
+a purely individualist morality, and they felt ill at ease in the larger
+social applications of moral principle which our age regards as more
+important. They feared to offend military supporters, and did not
+realise that one may entirely honour the soldier as long as the military
+system lasts, yet resent the system. They felt that this new movement
+was suspiciously hailed by Socialists, and that to denounce armies had
+an air of politics about it. They were peculiarly wedded to tradition,
+on account of the very nature they claimed for their traditions, and
+they instinctively felt that to denounce war would be to attempt to
+improve, not merely on their predecessors, but on the Old and the New
+Testaments. They solaced themselves with the thought that unnecessary
+violence was condemned in their general teaching, and that, if it
+eventually transpired that war was unnecessary, they could point out
+once more the all-embracing character of the Christian ethic. In fine,
+they were for the greater part, like the greater part of their fellows,
+mentally indolent and indisposed to think out or fight for a new idea.</p>
+
+
+<p>Whatever the explanation, the fact remains. By the tenth century
+Christianity was fully organised, and all the peoples of Europe were
+Christian; by the thirteenth century the power of the Church was
+enormous and the nations of Europe were settled and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> civilised. But
+neither then nor at any later period did Christianity perceive the crime
+and stupidity of the prevailing system. The perception is even now only
+faint and partial. It is this long toleration of the military system,
+the thousand-year silence on what is now acclaimed as one of the
+greatest applications of Christian principle, that one finds it
+difficult or impossible to forgive. The zeal of some of the modern
+clergy is open to a certain not unnatural suspicion: in view of their
+shrinking authority and the growing indifference of the world to dogma
+and ritual, they have been forced to take up these new and larger ideas
+of our time.</p>
+
+
+<p>Even if one lays aside that suspicion, and in many cases it is quite
+unjust, the clergy must realise that the indictment of Christianity is
+grave, and is almost unatonable. Those thousand years of conflict,
+during which they sanctioned every variety of war and initiated many
+wars in their own interest, have given the military system such root in
+the hearts of men that it will require a supreme and prolonged effort to
+destroy it. The proverbial visitor from Mars would not be so much amazed
+at any feature of our life as at this retention amid a great
+civilisation of the barbaric method of settling international
+differences. He would ask in astonishment how an intelligent and
+generally humane race, a race which raises homes for stray cats and aged
+horses, could cling to a system which, on infallible experience, plunges
+one or more countries in the deepest suffering every few years. He would
+learn that there has not been a war in Europe for a hundred years the
+initial cause of which would not have been better appreciated and
+adjudicated on by a body of impartial lawyers; and that, if the quarrels
+had thus been submitted to arbitration,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> we should have saved (including
+the annual military expenditure and the cost of the present war) some
+three million lives and more than &pound;15,000,000,000&mdash;since the end of the
+Napoleonic wars. In answer to the amazement of this imaginary critic, we
+could reply only that Europe has grown to regard the military system as
+so permanent and unquestioned an institution of our civilisation that it
+simply cannot imagine the abolition of that system.</p>
+
+
+<p>For this incapacity, this widespread inertia, this blundering idea that
+there is some serious intrinsic difficulty in the matter, the Churches
+are responsible. If they had directed to war the smallest particle of
+the ardent rhetoric they have poured on disbelief in dogmas which they
+are to-day abandoning, the public mind would have awakened long ago.
+There is no intrinsic difficulty in substituting arbitration for war.
+There are technical difficulties which the great lawyers and statesmen
+of the peace-movement have given ample promise of surmounting, but the
+overwhelming obstacle is merely this&mdash;the peoples of Europe do not
+insist on the reform. Of all the large problems which confront the
+modern mind this is incomparably the simplest. We are hopelessly divided
+as to the nature of the remedy for most of our social ills. Here the
+remedy is acknowledged: the plan has been elaborated almost in entirety:
+the international tribunal already exists, and awaits only its
+executive, which the nations of Europe could supply to-morrow. It is the
+will, the demand, that is wanting. For that lack we charge the utter
+failure of the Churches during the ages of their power to enunciate a
+plain moral lesson, and their positive encouragement of an evil system.
+That is the real indictment. It affects the Christian Church in every
+nation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Any person who cares to read the reports of the utterances of our clergy
+in the current religious periodicals will recognise that they are
+painfully conscious of the reproach which this war implies. One
+constantly finds them repeating that in this year of tragedy
+"Christianity has failed" and "the gospel has broken in our hands." It
+had been their boast that Christianity had civilised Europe, and none of
+them has the audacity or indecency to claim, as some writers have done,
+that such a war is in harmony with the principles and ideals of
+civilisation. They have preached brotherhood and peace, and the greater
+part of Christendom is engaged in a strife of the most terrible nature.
+It is not a struggle of Christian and infidel; it is a struggle of
+Christian and Christian, and one or several of the Christian nations
+involved are guilty of a crime greater in magnitude than all the murders
+in Europe during a decade. Above all patriotism, above all immediate
+anxiety, above all argumentation about responsibility, this grim fact
+stands out and reproaches them: after fifteen hundred years of Christian
+preaching Europe is locked in the bloodiest struggle of all time.</p>
+
+
+<p>During the last fifty or hundred years the clergy have developed some
+expertness in making apologies. They have lived in a world of anxious
+questions and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> heated charges, and a special department called
+Apologetics has been added to theology. They are, it is true, sorely
+perplexed, divided in counsel, uneasy as to their procedure. Some would
+ignore the pertinacious outsider and persuade their followers that he is
+negligible; others would sustain an energetic campaign against him. Some
+would openly and candidly meet the questions of their followers; others
+would prefer not to unsettle the large number who never ask questions.
+At the present juncture it is impossible to be wholly silent. Some of
+the clergy, it seems&mdash;I learn this from the recorded words of eminent
+preachers&mdash;wish to ignore the war and go on with their business as
+usual. But the majority feel that such a procedure is dangerous. This
+violent breach of Christian principles by Christian nations requires
+some explanation. Where is the long-boasted moral influence of
+Christianity? Where is the all-loving ruler of the universe? Let us
+examine some of the apologies of the preachers.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let me confess that, from a long experience of this apologetic branch of
+theology, I am not surprised to find that not a single speaker or
+writer&mdash;as far as my reading of their utterances goes&mdash;fairly meets the
+main difficulty. Most of them, naturally, are content to plead that the
+war has been forced on Europe by Germany, and that therefore no
+responsibility lies on Christianity as a whole for the tragedy and the
+moral failure it involves. A large number of them go even farther. They
+point to the heroic sacrifices made in defence of an ideal by France,
+Belgium, England, and Russia&mdash;the millions of men streaming to the
+battle-field, the millions of women bravely enduring the suspense and
+the loss, the millions who generously open their purses to every
+philanthropic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> enterprise&mdash;and they acclaim this as a triumph of
+Christian civilisation. As to the failure of Christianity in Germany to
+stand the test, they either point superficially to the growth of
+Rationalism, Biblical Criticism, and Socialism in that country, or they
+take refuge in the confusions of the extreme pacifists and refuse to
+assign responsibility at all, or they persuade themselves that a small
+minority of men who were not Christians deluded the German people into
+consenting to the war. In any case, they insist that Christianity as a
+whole is not impeached. Assume that Austria was dragged into the war by
+Germany, and you have four Christian nations&mdash;five, if one includes
+Serbia&mdash;behaving with great gallantry and entire propriety, and only one
+Christian nation misbehaving.</p>
+
+
+<p>There is no doubt that this is the common religious attitude, but it
+does not satisfy some of the more thoughtful and earnest preachers. This
+optimism seems to them rebuked by the very fact that Christendom is in a
+state of war to which Paganism can offer no parallel. They think of the
+lands beyond the sea to which they have been sending the Christian
+message of peace and brotherhood. They fancy they see China and Japan
+smiling their faint but distressing smile at the situation in Christian
+Europe. They have assured all these distant peoples that their faith has
+built up a shining civilisation in Europe, and now there flash and
+quiver through the nerves of the world the daily messages of horror, of
+fierce hatred, of appalling carnage, of the wanton destruction by
+Christians of Christian temples. The Gospel has, somehow, broken down in
+Europe, they regretfully admit.</p>
+
+
+<p>But they never go beyond this vague admission and boldly state the sin
+of the Churches. One would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> imagine that, in spite of its obvious and
+lamentable failure, they still thought that their predecessors had been
+justified in preaching only the general terms of the Christian gospel
+and never applying it to war. One would fancy that they are so
+unacquainted with history as to suppose that during the long ages of the
+past the Churches were really frowning on violence and warfare, instead
+of blessing and employing it. They fear to draw out in its full
+proportion the inefficacy (because of its vagueness) of the gospel and
+the long perversion of its ministers. Yet we cannot evade this
+fundamental fact of the situation, that this particular war is an
+outcome of a general military system, and the Churches have a very grave
+responsibility for the maintenance of that system until the twentieth
+century. We all know how the technical moral theologian of recent times
+has glossed the complacency of his Church. He has drawn a distinction
+between offensive and defensive war, and, since the latter is obviously
+just, he has maintained that armies are rightly raised to wage it when
+necessary. On this petty fallacy the Churches have so long reconciled
+themselves to militarism, and have, in fact, been amongst its closest
+allies. The clergy did not, or would not, see that the retention of the
+military system was in itself the surest provocation of offensive war;
+that ambition or covetousness could almost always find a moral pretext
+for aggression, and that there have been comparatively few priests in
+the history of Europe who ever stood out and unmasked the hypocrisy of
+such monarchs. As long as the military system lasted, it was certain
+that wars would take place, yet they never denounced the system. The
+great conception of substituting justice for violence, law for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the
+secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.</p>
+
+
+<p>For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have
+to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a
+unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its
+engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, assuredly, the
+Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique
+also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for
+that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the
+intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general
+culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in
+defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be
+connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and
+approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled,
+and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.</p>
+
+
+<p>But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to
+say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile
+their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure,
+to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this
+trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival
+which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few
+of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons
+of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more
+distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading
+religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these
+pronouncements and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> fail to realise that our generation acts not
+unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the
+clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern
+intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered
+and confusing emotions of the hour.</p>
+
+
+<p>One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from
+Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the
+Commonwealth and does assuredly express what multitudes of preachers are
+saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop
+Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his
+followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the
+Melbourne <i>Age</i> (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had "very
+strong ideas about the war" (I quote the words of the <i>Age</i>), and "did
+not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some
+king or emperor." He believed that "the great God who provided for all
+human creatures, through the war was punishing sin that had prevailed
+for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity." The
+Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes
+as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises
+his conclusion:</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The reason that God was using the present war for the punishment
+of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been
+not merely neglect of the worship and service of God, which had
+always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising
+of human light and human understanding and human will against the
+existence of the providence of God. It was not so common among us
+here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural
+faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think
+they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of
+their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such
+men."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical
+culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like
+him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their
+Church in our great and promising Commonwealth is not clear. In the
+course of this important sermon, in which he is delivering his very
+personal and mature conclusions on the greatest issue of the hour, the
+Archbishop observed that "the Roman Empire had been attacked by Attila"
+and "Attila scourged the Romans for the crimes of which they had for a
+long while been guilty." One is surprised that he did not add the pretty
+legend of the awe-stricken Hun retreating before the majestic figure of
+Pope Leo I. However, most of us are aware that, as a student in any
+college of Australia ought to be able to inform the Archbishop, Attila
+never reached within two hundred miles of Rome, and that the Pagan
+Romans, whom the Archbishop obviously has in mind, had been extinguished
+long before the monarch of the Huns was born. There is no greater
+historical scholarship in the other proofs which the prelate brings in
+support of his thesis that war is often deliberately sent as a
+punishment.</p>
+
+
+<p>But what are we to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of
+the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is
+based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> medieval
+torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise,
+tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds
+they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of
+describing a refusal to assent to the doctrine of hell and heaven as a
+wilful rebellion of passion against the restraining influences of
+Christianity is going out of fashion. Christian people were meeting too
+many heretics in the flesh, and did not recognise the thing described
+from the pulpit. The sturdy Archbishop will have none of this pampering.
+Unbelief is a matter of the will as well as the understanding. And he
+actually believes that God guided the thoughts of William II in
+engineering this war&mdash;believes it for a reason a hundred times worse
+than the Kaiser's idea. He believes that God sent on Europe a war that
+will cost &pound;10,000,000,000, that is blasting the homes and embittering
+the hearts of millions, that mingles the innocent and guilty in one
+common and fearful desolation, that sends millions to a premature death
+amidst circumstances which do not lend themselves to a devout
+preparation, that is raising storms of hatred and perverting the souls
+of millions, because a few other millions refuse to go to church. It
+would be difficult to conceive a cruder and more barbarous idea. Attila
+did not scourge the Romans, but he did scourge other peoples; and we
+hold him up to execration for ever for it. But Archbishop Carr, and many
+other preachers, think that an all-holy and all-intelligent God can do
+infinitely worse than Attila. He is going to punish the unbelievers in
+eternal fire when they die: meantime he will make a hell on earth for
+the innocent as well as the supposed guilty, the child and the mother as
+well as the free-thinking father.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Of a truth, it is not surprising that
+a reluctance to listen to sermons has spread to Melbourne, and that men
+are wondering whether they had better not take in hand their own
+destinies rather than entrust them to such spiritual guides as this.</p>
+
+
+<p>Note, particularly, in passing the emphasis which the Archbishop puts on
+the determination of our generation to control its own destinies. Until
+the nineteenth century men entrusted their destinies, on the moral side,
+to guides like Archbishop Carr. I have described the result. In the
+nineteenth century there began this practice, which the Archbishop
+thinks worthy of so inhuman a chastisement, of men attending to their
+own moral interests. Of this also I have described the result. The moral
+sentiment of Europe has greatly improved, and there is at least a
+widespread revolt against warfare and a prospect of abolishing it. For
+this God, the more than human, scorched Europe with the horrible flames
+which Archbishop Carr thinks he keeps in his arsenal of
+torture-implements. The Archbishop says that infidelity has not spread
+so much in Australia. I should, if I were not well acquainted with the
+Commonwealth, be disposed to see in that the reason why eminent prelates
+can still utter such gross medieval nonsense in that country.</p>
+
+
+<p>In England this particularly crude type of nonsense is not usually
+uttered by preachers of distinction,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> though it is common enough among
+less responsible preachers; but there is a dangerous approach to it in
+some of the sermons which the religious periodicals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> regard as
+important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I
+notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are,
+in harmony with his test, described as "the vultures of God." Germany,
+it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor
+Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his
+words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the action of God in the
+military conduct of the Allies, and to that extent he is hardly less
+revolting, in view of his culture, than the archbishop. Could the God of
+Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to
+sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent
+along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?</p>
+
+
+<p>More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent
+National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist
+preachers, the Rev. J.&nbsp;H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the
+Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this
+gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it
+and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the
+speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in
+the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking
+question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest
+efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of
+the Churches.</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe,
+gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to "the
+failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity." He conceived it as
+"God's judgment upon the Church's failure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> seriously to devote herself
+to the great cause of peace on earth and good-will among men." With all
+their boasts of what Christianity had done in Europe, it now appeared
+that that civilisation was raised upon "foundations of sand." The
+preacher claimed that much was being done in modern times by the clergy
+to promote international amity, but he seemed to feel that it was little
+and was <i>very</i> recent. The spectacle unfolded before us in Europe to-day
+is a sufficient proof of its inadequacy. And, as Mr. Rushbrooke said, we
+now see how little use it is to preach ideals at home and not apply them
+to the common life of the world.</p>
+
+
+<p>These words are the nearest to wisdom that I have found among a large
+collection of pulpit-utterances and religious articles. The preacher
+plainly sees, and with some measure of candour confesses, that long
+remissness of Christian ministers in applying their principles to which
+the war, and all wars, are fundamentally due. The record which he
+carefully makes of recent efforts to redeem the failure is paltry in
+comparison with the resources even of the Free Churches, and only serves
+to bring out more clearly the awful neglect of Christian ministers
+during the long ages when they had a mighty power in Europe. But Mr.
+Rushbrooke makes one grave error. He feels that not merely the relation
+of the war to Christianity, but its relation to God, is engaging public
+attention, and he stumbles into the theory that God sent the war. It is
+"God's judgment on the Church's failure." We must suppose that Mr.
+Rushbrooke did not literally mean what he said. His words imply a theory
+of the war more monstrous even than that of Archbishop Carr. To punish
+Europe for the sins of unbelievers has at least a genuine medieval
+plausibility about it; but to send this in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>describable plague on the
+nations of Europe because the clergy failed to do their duty.... One
+must really assume that Mr. Rushbrooke did not mean what he said, and
+leave the sentence unfinished. What he meant it is impossible to
+conjecture. To the religious mind "God's judgment" means a chastisement
+sent by God. But, whatever Mr. Rushbrooke meant, he had been wiser to
+leave the idea of God out of his comments on this war, and to say
+frankly that it would bring on them and on their predecessors, on the
+whole of Christianity, the judgment of man and the judgment of history
+for their neglect of their opportunities.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Rev. A.&nbsp;T. Guttery addressed the Council in a more cheerful mood,
+and his reflections are characteristic of a large group of the clergy.
+He would not for a moment allow the failure of Christianity. The
+Churches had, he said, been so successful in compelling the world to
+recognise the evil of aggressive warfare that even the Germans were
+eager to describe their action as purely defensive. "The Pagan glory of
+war for its own sake was gone." And when we acknowledge the comparative
+failure of religion in Germany, and restrict our attention to the sphere
+of our own clergy, we find that they have created an entirely new
+spirit. The lust for territory and for gold is felt no more in England.
+Here there is no mafficking over victories, there are no hymns of hate.
+The British nation has been sobered by the influence of Christianity. We
+may regret that the German people has not proved equally susceptible,
+and its pastors equally energetic, but we cannot bear their burden.
+Their naughtiness alone has disturbed the moral progress which, even in
+this department, Christianity was fostering.</p>
+
+
+<p>This is, I think, a very usual attitude of the clergy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> and I have
+already appreciated the sound element of it. There is no comparison
+between the behaviour of the two nations. Whether England deserves quite
+all the compliments which Mr. Guttery showers upon it may be a matter of
+opinion. We have as yet little cause for "mafficking," but there is very
+little doubt that it will occur on a grandiose scale before the war is
+over. We do not sing hymns of hate; but it might be hazardous to
+speculate what we would do if some nation drew an iron ring round our
+country and reduced us almost to a condition of starvation. We have no
+lust for territory&mdash;I am not sure about the lust for gold&mdash;because we
+have in our Empire territory enough for our population; and we may wait
+to see if England does not annex any part of Germany's African or
+Pacific possessions. Mr. Guttery's contrast is crude and superficial. He
+ignores the economic and geographical conditions which give us a feeling
+of content and Germany a profound feeling of discontent and a dangerous
+ambition. The German character is not in itself inferior to ours, and it
+were well for us to fancy ourselves in Germany's position and wonder if
+we would have acted otherwise.</p>
+
+
+<p>On the other hand, I have freely acknowledged, or claimed, that there
+has been a great improvement in the moral temper of Europe, and that
+this is especially seen in the odium that is now cast on aggressive or
+offensive war. But to claim this improvement for the credit of religion
+is, to say the least, audacious. The more simple-minded of Mr. Guttery's
+hearers would imagine that the change set in with the fall of Paganism.
+"The Pagan glory of war for its own sake is gone." When clerical writers
+speak of Paganism they think that any evil deed ever done by a Pagan is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+characteristic of the whole body; they ask us to apply a different
+standard to their own body. Plato and Socrates were Pagans; Marcus
+Aurelius and Antoninus Pius&mdash;to speak of warriors and statesmen&mdash;were
+Pagans. The truth is that a glory in war for its own sake was no more
+generally characteristic of Paganism than it was of Christian Europe
+until a century ago: it was probably less. Most of the German Emperors
+and of the Kings of England, France, and Spain would fairly come under
+the description which Mr. Guttery calls Pagan. One hardly needs to know
+much of history to perceive that this moral improvement in the
+conception of war belongs to the last century and a half, and it is
+somewhat bold to claim that a change which made no appearance during a
+thousand years of profound Christian influence, and did begin to appear
+and make progress as that faith waned, can be claimed for Christianity.
+I do not forget that the theologian began long ago, in the seclusion of
+his cell or study, to condemn offensive warfare. But there have been
+hundreds of offensive wars waged by Christian monarchs since that date,
+and we do not read of any instance in which the clergy failed to endorse
+the thin casuistry by which the offensive was turned into a defensive or
+a preventive war, or refused to sanction an entire neglect of the
+principle.</p>
+
+
+<p>Dr. Scott-Lidgett followed on somewhat similar lines. The whole trouble,
+he protested, was due to an anti-Christian, illiberal, and inhuman
+system. It seems that he was referring to Prussia, and it is regrettable
+that he did not feel called to explain why that system prevails in the
+year of the Lord 1915, or how it finds an instrument of its ambition in
+a militarism that ought to have been denounced and abolished<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> centuries
+ago. Mr. Shakespeare, another distinguished Nonconformist, follows the
+same facile course&mdash;casts all the responsibility on Germany&mdash;and equally
+fails to explain how Germany came to find the machinery of destruction
+at its hand in our age.</p>
+
+
+<p>In fine, Dean Welldon, one of the most energetic spokesmen of the Church
+of England, addressed this Free Church Council, and imparted an element
+of originality. He used the inconclusive and dangerous argument of <i>tu
+quoque</i>. If, he said, you claim that this war exhibits the failure of
+Christianity, you must admit that it shows equally the failure of
+science and civilisation. Nay, he says, growing bolder, if your
+contention is true, Christianity has done no more than supply the
+instrument of its own destruction, but science and civilisation have
+brought us back to savagery.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is, of course, difficult to follow a man's rounded thought in the
+crabbed phrases of an abbreviating reporter, but it is plain that Dean
+Welldon has here been guilty of a confusion which only betrays his
+apologetic poverty in face of this great crisis. Science&mdash;and it is
+especially science that the clergy conceive as the rival they have to
+discredit&mdash;has no concern whatever with the war. Science, either as an
+organised body of teachers or as a branch of culture, has never
+discussed war, and never had the faintest duty or opportunity to do so.
+Economic science may discuss particular aspects of war, but the
+economist deals with things as they are, not as they ought to be. Moral
+science even is not a preaching agency, desirous of dividing with the
+clergy the ethical guidance of the people. When men pit science against
+religion, they usually refer to its superior power of explaining
+reality.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> And if it be objected that therefore no morally educative
+agency would remain if religion were discarded, the answer is simple. A
+system of moral idealism founded on science&mdash;it is absurd to call it
+science&mdash;does exist, and might at any time be enlarged to the
+proportions of a national or international educative agency. As yet it
+is left to individual cultivation or crystallised in a few tiny
+associations, such as Ethical and Secularist and, partly, Socialist
+Societies; and I venture to say, from a large experience of these
+bodies, that, apart from the professed peace societies, they have been
+more assiduous than any religious associations in England, in proportion
+to their work, in demanding the substitution of arbitration for war, and
+that the overwhelming majority, almost the entirety, of their members
+are pacifists. To speak of this small organised force, with its slender
+influence, as equally discredited with the far mightier and
+thousand-year-older influence of the Churches would be strangely
+incongruous; and it is hardly less incongruous to drag science into the
+comparison.</p>
+
+
+<p>A somewhat similar distinction must be observed in regard to
+civilisation. The antithesis of religion and civilisation is confused
+and confusing. Christian ministers have claimed that <i>they</i> are the
+moral element of civilisation, and they have jealously combated every
+effort to take from them or divide with them that function. They resist
+every attempt to exclude their almost useless Bible-lessons from our
+schools, and to substitute for them a direct and more practical moral
+education of children. They have for fifteen hundred years claimed and
+possessed the monopoly of ethical culture in European civilisation, and
+we are a little puzzled when they turn round and say, with an air of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+argument, that if Christianity has failed civilisation also has failed.
+There is only one civilisation in Europe that has attempted to
+substitute a humanitarian for a religious training of conduct; one
+nation that is plainly and overwhelmingly non-Christian. That nation is
+France. And France has one of the best moral records in modern Europe,
+and has behaved nobly throughout this lamentable business. In fine, if
+we take Dean Welldon's words in the most generous sense, if we assume
+that he refers to the whole body of culture and sentiment which, in our
+time, aspires to mould and direct the race apart from Christian
+doctrine, the answer has already been given. Christianity is, as a power
+in Europe, fourteen centuries old; this humanitarianism is hardly a
+century old. But there has surely been more progress made during this
+last century toward the destruction of the military system, and more
+progress in the elimination of brutality from war, than in the whole
+preceding thirteen centuries. Does Dean Welldon doubt that? Or does he
+regard it as a mere coincidence?</p>
+
+
+<p>Thus, whether we turn to Churchman or Nonconformist, to cleric or
+layman, we find no satisfactory apology. I have before me a short
+article by Mr. Max Pemberton on the question, "Will Christianity survive
+the war?" He uses the most consecrated phrases of the Church, and leaves
+no doubt whatever that he writes in defence of Christianity. But Mr.
+Pemberton practically confines himself to a very emphatic personal
+assurance that Christianity <i>will</i> survive the war, and does not
+honestly face a single one of the questions of "the Pagan" against whom
+he is writing. He does make one serious point of a peculiar character.
+There are, he says, "23,000 priests<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> fighting for France in the
+trenches." Mr. Pemberton seems to find it easy to accept the interested
+statements of those Roman Catholic journalists who make sectarian use of
+some of the London dailies. There are only about 30,000 priests in
+France, and, since none of them are younger than twenty-three, to
+suppose that seventy-five per cent. of them are of military age is to
+take a remarkable view of the population of France. In any case, there
+is no special ground for rhapsody. They are not volunteers; in France
+every man must do his civic duty. We may appreciate their devotion to
+their religion on the battle-field, but Mr. Pemberton must be
+imperfectly acquainted with the French character if he supposes that the
+thirty-four million unbelievers of France are going to return to the
+Church because the younger <i>cur&eacute;s</i> did not try to evade the military
+service which the State imposed on them.</p>
+
+
+<p>Another document I may quote is a manifesto issued by the "Hampstead
+Evangelical Free Church Council," a joint declaration of the principal
+Nonconformist ministers of that highly cultivated suburb. It does not
+purport to vindicate the Churches, yet some of its observations in
+connection with the war open out a new page of apologetics. These
+clergymen invite all the citizens of their district, on the ground of
+the war, to attend church, even if they have not been in the habit of
+doing so. On what more precise ground? The able lawyer who received this
+invitation, and forwarded it to me, thought it, not the most ingenious,
+but the most curious, piece of pleading he had ever known. The citizens
+of Hampstead were invited to go to church "to offer up to God a
+sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for his goodness to us as a
+nation"! At the very time the eminent preachers were writing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> this, the
+darkened city still cowered under the threat of a horrible outrage; the
+shattered homes and fresh graves of Scarborough and Whitby reminded us
+faintly of the horrors beyond the sea; the maimed soldiers all over the
+country, the sad figures of the bereaved, the anxious hearts of a
+million of our people, were but a beginning of the evil that had fallen
+on us. We had in fourteen years, since the last war, been obliged to
+spend a thousand millions sterling in preparation for a war we did not
+desire, and we were entering upon an expenditure of something more than
+a thousand millions in a year. All this we had incurred through no fault
+of ours. And these clergymen thought it a good opportunity to invite us
+to go to church to thank God for "his goodness to us as a nation."</p>
+
+
+<p>Another manifesto is signed by a body of archbishops and bishops of the
+Anglican Church. It enjoined all the faithful to supplicate the Almighty
+on January 3rd to stop the war. This was to be done "all round the
+Empire." I will not indulge in any cheap sarcasm as to the result,
+though one would probably be right in saying that, if the end be
+deferred to the year 1917, they will still believe that their prayers
+had effect. What it is more material to notice is that the prelates
+think that "these are days of great spiritual opportunity." It seems
+that "the shattering of so much that seemed established reveals the
+vanity of human affairs," and that "anxiety, separation, and loss have
+made many hearts sensible of the approach of Christ to the soul." It is,
+perhaps, unkind to examine this emotional language from an intellectual
+point of view, but one feels that there is a subtle element of apology
+in it. These spiritual advantages may outweigh the secular pain; may
+even justify God's share<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> in the great catastrophe. I have examined, and
+will discuss more fully in the next chapter, the theistic side of this
+plea. Intellectually, it borders on monstrosity: it is the survival of
+an ancient and barbaric conception. The notion that "the approach of
+Christ to the soul" is felt especially in time of affliction is merely a
+statement of a certain type of emotional experience, while the
+revelation of "the vanity of human affairs" is sheer perversity. Human
+affairs have for ages been so badly managed, in this respect, that we
+cannot in a decade or a century rid ourselves of such a legacy. The real
+moral is to discover who were responsible for that legacy of disorder
+and violence, and to put our affairs on a new and sounder basis.</p>
+
+
+<p>A considerable number of clerical writers proceed on the suggestion
+discreetly advanced by these Anglican prelates. Let us wait, they ask,
+until the clouds of war have rolled away, and then estimate the
+spiritual gain to men from the trial through which they have passed, and
+the closer association of the Churches which it may bring about. Now I
+have no doubt that many who really believe the doctrines of
+Christianity, yet have for years neglected the duties which their belief
+imposes on them, will be induced by this awful experience to return to
+allegiance. The number is limited, and an equal or greater number may
+be, and probably will be, induced to surrender religion entirely, and
+with good reason, by the reflections with which this war inspires them.
+But to insinuate that this spiritual advantage, if it be an advantage,
+of the few is justly purchased by the appalling suffering and disorder
+brought about by the war is one of those religious affirmations which
+seem to the outsider positively repulsive.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>I do not speak merely of the deaths, the pain, the privation, the
+outrages, the flood of tears and blood over half of Europe. This,
+indeed, is of itself enough to make the theory repellent to any who do
+not share the ascetic views taught in the Churches. The notion that an
+evil is justified if good issue from it is akin to the notion that the
+end justifies the means. But I would draw attention to an aspect of the
+war which is almost ignored by these eloquent preachers. They eagerly
+record every flash of heroism, every spark of charity and mercy, that
+the war evokes. They refer sympathetically to the dead and the bereaved,
+the outraged girls and women&mdash;whom, in the narrowest Puritanism, they
+forbid to rid themselves of the awful burden laid on them by drunken
+brutes&mdash;the shattered homes and monuments. But there is a side of war
+which they must know, and it demands plain speaking. It relaxes the
+control of moral restraints even where it was before operative. The
+illegitimate-birth rate of England and France will faintly tell the
+story before the year is out. Inquiry in any town where our soldiers are
+lodged, or in the rear of the French and English (or any other)
+trenches, will tell it more fully. I do not speak of crime and violence,
+but of willing sexual intercourse where it was never known before. These
+things, and the increased drunkenness and the stirring of old passions,
+are regarded by the clergy as amongst the most evil things of life. Do
+they seriously suggest that they have been brought in to secure, or are
+justified by, the spiritual advantage of the refined and emotional few
+whose religion is only deepened by affliction?</p>
+
+
+<p>In short, I find not a single phrase of valid explanation or apology in
+these and other prominent clerical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> pronouncements I have read. They are
+superficial, contradictory, and vapid. Nothing is more common than for
+religious writers to protest that the conception of reality which is
+opposed to theirs is shallow. What depth, what sincere grip of reality,
+does one find in any of these pulpit utterances? Yet I have taken the
+pronouncements of official bodies or of distinguished preachers who may
+be trusted to put the Christian feeling in its most persuasive form. One
+thinks that God sent the war; another attributes it to German rebels
+against God. One regards it as a spiritual agency devised for our good;
+another says that it is an unmitigated calamity sent for our punishment.
+One sees in it the failure of Christianity; others find in it precisely
+a confirmation of Christian teaching. Some think it will draw men to
+God; others that it will drive men from God. Unity, perhaps, we cannot
+expect; but the empty rhetoric and utter sophistry of most of these
+utterances reveal the complete lack of defence. On the main indictment
+of the Christian Church, its failure to have condemned and removed
+militarism long ago, all are silent; or the one preacher who notices it
+can only dejectedly confess that it is true.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE WAR AND THEISM</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In the leading Catholic periodical of this country there has been some
+nervous discussion of the attitude of the Pope. A new man, a strong and
+enlightened man, happens to have mounted the chair of Peter in the midst
+of the war. For more than a century his predecessors have bemoaned the
+increasing wickedness of the world: Pius VII, tossed like a helpless
+cork on the waves of the Revolution; Leo XII and Pius VIII, the
+associates of the Holy Alliance; Gregory XVI, eating sweetmeats or
+mumbling his breviary while young Italy sweated blood; Pius IX, grasping
+eagerly his tatters of sovereignty; Leo XIII, the unsuccessful
+diplomatist; Pius X, the medieval monk. They saw their Church shrink
+decade by decade, and they witnessed the prosperity of all that they
+denounced. Benedict XV came to save the Church, and a great moral
+opportunity awaited him. But, while claiming to be the moral arbitrator
+of the world, he avoids his plain duty, and is content to repeat the
+worn phrases about the iniquity of the modern spirit. His apologists say
+that the war is politics, and that Popes must not interfere in politics.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have earlier explained in what sense this war presents a political
+aspect to Benedict XV, and given the reason for his reluctance. It is
+typical of the whole failure of Christianity. A little over nineteen
+centuries<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> ago, it is said in the churches, a star shone over the cradle
+of the Saviour, and choirs of angels announced his coming as a promise
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men." I am not in this little
+work examining the whole question of the influence of Christianity. But
+it is well to recall that, according to its own records, its first and
+greatest promise to the world was peace; and to that old Roman Empire,
+and to Europe at any stage in its later history, no greater blessing
+could have been brought. Has Christianity succeeded?</p>
+
+
+<p>But the religious interest of the war is by no means exhausted when we
+have concluded that it marks, in one of the most important departments
+of human action, the complete failure of historical Christianity. My
+purpose is to discuss this relation to the Churches, and it would not be
+completed unless I considered the war in relation to their fundamental
+doctrine, the moral government of the universe by a Supreme Being. In a
+few months, we hope, the war will be over: the Allies will have
+triumphed. We know, from experience and from history, what will follow
+in the Churches. From end to end of Britain, from Dover to Penzance and
+from Southampton to Aberdeen, there will rise a jubilant cry that God
+has blessed our arms and awarded us the victory. Now that we are in the
+midst of the horrors and burdens of the war God is little mentioned. One
+would imagine that the great majority of the clergy conceived him as
+standing aside, for some inscrutable reason, and letting wicked men
+deploy their perverse forces. When the triumph comes, gilding the past
+sacrifices or driving them from memory, God will be on every lip. The
+whole nation will be implored to come and kneel before the altars.
+Royalty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> and nobility and military, judges and stockbrokers and working
+men&mdash;above all, a surging, thrilling, ecstatic mass of women&mdash;will
+gather round the clergy, and will avow that they see the finger of God
+in this glorious consummation. The relation of the war to God will then
+become the supreme consideration for the Christian mind. It may be more
+instructive to consider it now, before the last flood of emotion pours
+over our judgments.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have already discussed some of the clerical allusions to the share of
+God in the war. They are so frankly repellent that one cannot be
+surprised that the majority of the clergy prefer to be silent on that
+point. They prefer to await the victory and build on its more genial and
+indulgent emotions. The war is either a blessing or a curse. One would
+think that there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are
+bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily
+pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of
+the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human
+nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, and
+so on.</p>
+
+
+<p>Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse,
+yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty. This theory is
+natural enough in the minds of men and women who believe in hell. In
+earlier ages men could not distinguish between the law of retaliation
+and the need to deter criminals by using violence against them when they
+transgressed. In many primitive systems of justice the law of
+retaliation is expressly consecrated. It is even introduced,
+inconsistently and as a survival of barbaric times, in the Babylonian
+and the Judaic codes, side by side with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> saner views. It is, of course,
+merely a systematisation of brute passion. In the beginning, if a man
+knocked your tooth out, you knocked one of his teeth out. With the
+growth of law and justice, the barbarous nature of the impulse was
+recognised, and the community, by its representatives, inflicted a
+"punishment" on the offender instead of allowing the offended to
+retaliate. With the modern improvement of moral sentiments we have
+realised that this is an imperfect advance on the barbaric idea. The
+community has no more right to "punish" than the offended individual
+had. We now impose hardship on an offender only for the purpose of
+intimidating him from repeating the offence, or of deterring others from
+offending. The idea is still somewhat crude, and a third stage will in
+time be reached; but it is satisfactory that we now&mdash;not since the
+advent of Christianity, but since the rise of modern humanism&mdash;all admit
+that the only permissible procedure is deterrence, and not punishment as
+such.</p>
+
+
+<p>It may seem ungracious to be ever repeating that these improvements did
+not take place during the period of Christian influence, but in the
+recent period of its decay. There is, however, in this case a most
+important and urgent reason for emphasising the fact. I say that we
+<i>all</i> admit the more humane conception of punishment, but this must be
+qualified. In human affairs we do: Carlyle was, perhaps, the last
+moralist to cling to the old conception. But in the religious world the
+old idea has been flagrantly retained. The doctrine of eternal
+punishment is clearly based on the barbaric old idea that a prince whose
+dignity has been insulted may justly inflict the most barbarous
+punishment on the offender. Theologians have, since the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> days of Thomas
+Aquinas, wasted whole reams of parchment in defending the dogma of hell,
+because they knew nothing whatever of comparative jurisprudence and the
+evolution of moral ideas. To us the development of the doctrine is
+clear. In the Christian doctrine of hell we have a flagrant survival of
+the early barbaric theory of punishment. Modern divines&mdash;while
+continuing to describe the non-religious view of life as "superficial"
+and the Christian as "profound"&mdash;have actually yielded to the modern
+sentiment, and in a very large measure rejected one of the fundamental
+dogmas of the Christian tradition. In order to conceal the procedure as
+far as possible, some of them are now contending brazenly that Christ
+never taught the doctrine of eternal punishment, and are deluding their
+uncultivated congregations with sophistical manipulations of Greek
+words.</p>
+
+
+<p>This does not mean that Christians have lower moral sentiments than
+non-Christians, but that the rigidity of their traditions, which they
+regard as sacred and unalterable, imposes restrictions on them. Hence
+the fact that, while Protestants have so very largely rejected the
+doctrine of hell, Roman Catholics, with their more rigid conservatism
+and claim of infallibility, still cling to it, and offer the amazing
+spectacle of a body claiming to possess the highest ideals in the world,
+yet actually cherishing an entirely barbaric theory. There is probably
+not a Catholic lawyer in the world who does not reject the old idea of
+punishment as barbaric, yet he placidly believes that God retains it.
+That is why we find a Catholic archbishop like Carr putting forth so
+revolting an idea of the war, while Protestant preachers as a rule
+shrink from mentioning God in connection with it. These things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> make it
+impossible for one to understand how non-Christians can say, as they do
+sometimes, that if they <i>were</i> to accept a creed, it would be the Roman
+creed.</p>
+
+
+<p>Any theory of the war which proceeds on the lines of the hell-theory is
+simply barbaric, and is beneath serious discussion. We know to-day that
+both ethics and religion are in a state of constant evolution. We look
+back over a stream of several thousand years of historically traceable
+development; we follow that stream faintly through earlier tens of
+thousands of years in the ideas of primitive peoples; and we see the
+evolution going on plainly in the creeds and ethical codes of our own
+time. But the practice of registering certain stages of this evolution
+in sacred books or codes, which are then imposed on man for centuries or
+millennia as something unalterable, has been and is a very serious
+hindrance to development, both in ethics and religion. It is all the
+worse because these codes and sacred books always contain certain
+elements which belong to even earlier and less enlightened stages, and
+whole regiments of philosophers or theologians are employed for ages in
+putting glosses on ancient and barbaric ideas at which the world
+eventually laughs. However, we need not linger here over these ancient
+ways of regarding life. The man who keeps his God at a moral level which
+we disdain ourselves rarely listens to argument. He protects his "faith"
+by believing that it is a mortal sin (involving sentence of hell) to
+read any book that would examine it critically. It is a most ingenious
+arrangement by which the doctrine of a vindictive God protects itself
+against moral progress.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now any suggestion that God sent this war upon Europe&mdash;whether as a
+judgment on the clergy, or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> judgment on unbelievers, or a judgment on
+the arrogance of the Germans, etc.&mdash;is part of this old barbarism, and
+may be disregarded. It conceives that God is vindictive, and at the same
+time assures us that Christianity sternly condemns vindictiveness. It
+allows God to deal mighty blows at those who affront him, and tells men
+to bear affront with patience and turn the other cheek to the smiter. It
+is simply part of that mixture and confusion of old and new ideas which
+a codified religion always exhibits. We pass it by, and turn to more
+serious considerations. I pass by also eccentric ideas of Deity like
+those of Sir Oliver Lodge or Mr. G.&nbsp;B. Shaw&mdash;two oracles who have been
+singularly silent on the religious aspect of the war. Let us examine the
+main religious problem as broadly and as honestly as we can.</p>
+
+
+<p>The first and chief reflection that occurs to any man who does thus
+seriously examine the relation of the war to theism is that, after all,
+it is not so easy to disentangle theology from the crude old doctrines
+which our more liberal divines think they have abandoned. They tell us
+that they do not believe in a vindictive Deity, they disdain the
+doctrine of eternal punishment, they smile at many of the Judaic
+conceptions of Jehovah in the Old Testament. God is the all-holy and
+benevolent ruler of the universe. They refuse to believe that the souls
+of sinners and unbelievers are tortured for ever after death, and trust
+the whole scheme of things to the love and justice of God.</p>
+
+
+<p>The grave difficulty of this enlightened theology, indeed of all
+theology, is the immense amount of pain and evil in the universe, and
+this mighty war we are considering puts it in a very acute form. It is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+amusing to look back on some of the lines of apologetics in recent
+years. There was a school of people, following some "profound" religious
+thinker, who held that evil was "only relative." They made the wonderful
+discovery that everything real is good, in the metaphysical sense, and
+evil is unreal. Evil, they said, is merely the negation, the
+falling-short, of good; and you do not ask for the creator or cause of a
+negative thing. More recently a school endeavoured to come to their
+assistance with the discovery that pain does not really exist at all.
+One did not need to know philosophy or science in order to realise that
+a sensation of pain is just as positive and real a thing as a sensation
+of pleasure; or that, although death is <i>only</i> the negation of life, one
+is really entitled to ask why one's dear child is thus "negated" at the
+age of six or twelve. Then there came this new school with its discovery
+that pain does not exist. Death, of course, is an entry into a more
+glorious life beyond; pain is an illusion to be banished by resolute
+thought. These childish symposia were interrupted every few years by
+some disastrous earthquake, the sinking of a great liner, an epidemic of
+disease, a famine, and so on; but the pious philosophers bravely
+struggled on. One may trust that the war has reduced them to silence,
+and that we need not linger over them.</p>
+
+
+<p>Then there was the school which sought desperately to find good in evil.
+A man or woman is stricken with disease. Very often it brings with it a
+softening, an improvement, of character; either in the patient or in the
+nurses, or in both. Our religious philosophers fancied they caught in
+this a glimpse of the divine plan: cancer was an instrument of
+righteousness in the hands of the Almighty, the bacillus of
+tuberculosis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> was a moral agency. They detected cases in which adverse
+fortune had sobered and softened a man: the finger of Providence. In
+France there was a very considerable return to the Catholic Church, and
+recovery of its power, after the disastrous war of 1870. In the south of
+Italy there is always much less sexual freedom for a time after an
+earthquake has buried a few tens of thousands under the ruins of their
+houses. I would undertake to fill a quarto volume with instances of good
+things which arose out of or followed upon evil experiences. We saw that
+the present war is being examined in the same respect. There are "great
+spiritual opportunities": hundreds of thousands of young men are being
+compelled (by the authorities) to go to church who had not been for
+years; the different denominations are fraternising as they never did
+before; the churches are rather fuller than they had been of late:
+charity is awakened on a prodigious scale; zeal for an ideal (the
+violated peace of Belgium) is dragging men even from our slums to the
+colours. Here again one could at least fill a moderate treatise with the
+things achieved; and beyond them all is the unuttered vision of the
+crowded churches at the triumphant close of the war, perhaps that
+long-coveted religious revival.</p>
+
+
+<p>There is no doubt whatever that this theory of the war will be
+assiduously pressed when nature has drawn her green mantle once more
+over the blackened area of the war and our hearts are lifted up by
+thought of victory. It is already being urged, and I would add a little
+to the comments I have already passed on it.</p>
+
+
+<p>The clergy would do well to realise that, whatever virtue this theory
+may have in soothing the minds and dissolving the doubts of their
+followers, to an outsider<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> it seems monstrous. In the first place, it
+includes no sense of proportion, and amounts to a colossal untruth. We
+must surely take into account the amount of evil inflicted and the
+amount of good that ensues. Take sickness, for instance. One would
+imagine that, if Christians seriously believe that illness is sent by
+God to achieve certain salutary modifications of character, they ought
+strenuously to oppose the modern determination to reduce disease to a
+minimum. They do not, and would, on the contrary, soon reduce to silence
+any religious crank who proposed it. They know perfectly well that the
+cases of "spiritual advantage" from illness bear no proportion whatever
+to the amount of suffering in the world. Slight but painful illnesses
+rarely have any beneficent effect on character; very frequently the
+reverse. Any large city, at any given moment, is racked with pains which
+do but give rise to curses, or a polite equivalent. Most of the
+irritation and perversion of character is due to morbid influences. And
+for every case in which a long illness issues in some signal advance of
+character, a hundred others could be quoted in which the illness was an
+unmitigated calamity. So it is with bereavement and with adversity of
+fortune. Look honestly into the experience of any class of the
+community, and ask in what <i>proportion</i> of cases narrowness of means,
+especially after comfort, brings a "spiritual advantage."</p>
+
+
+<p>So it is above all with this war. Any man who thinks that the awful
+perversion of the character of a great European people, the death of
+such vast numbers in such painful circumstances, the ruin of further
+millions, and all the innumerable ugly results of a great war, were
+worth bringing about in order to secure a few spiritual advantages has
+neither sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> of proportion nor sense of decency nor sense of humour.
+The theory would be too repulsive if it were put in this plain form, and
+it is more usual merely to point out these good results and hint that
+war is not absolutely and in every respect an evil. As if any person
+ever said that it was. The point is simple, and ought not to be
+obscured. A few incidental advantages do not reconcile us to this
+colossal misery, suffering, and waste, and do not in the slightest
+degree alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed
+human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed
+such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary
+disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained,
+what should we think of him?</p>
+
+
+<p>The parallel reminds us that of infinite wisdom we expect infinitely
+more than of a human ruler. Once unintelligent nature had a crude,
+wasteful, hard method of producing new and higher types of life. Man,
+having intelligence, produces the same result without waste or
+suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an
+intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man
+who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human
+ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they
+bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us
+of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the
+war was designed for certain practical uses, such as those we have had
+suggested by various divines, one may reply at once that a more brutal
+and unjust way of attaining those ends could not have been devised. It
+is almost impossible to conceive any man seriously entertaining the
+notion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> Yet all the jubilation and thanksgiving that will follow the
+war, all the supplication that accompanies its fortunes to-day, and the
+whole teaching of Christian theology, imply that God did direct the
+political movements and military ambitions which have culminated in the
+war. Even a human statesman could have devised a less terrible method of
+attaining any end that has yet been conceived for the war. The idea of
+the war as a punishment is quite logical and intelligible, though five
+hundred years out of date. But the idea of the war as a medicinal or an
+educative process has neither logic nor intelligibility, and does not
+even attain that consistency with modern ethical sentiments which it
+seeks. The colossal amount of suffering inflicted on innocent people and
+on children puts it entirely out of court.</p>
+
+
+<p>Thirdly, this theory, as I said, raises the question whether the end
+justifies the means. Here we have another illustration of the way in
+which Christian dogma keeps the Christian conscience in many matters
+behind the ethical sentiment of the age. Many liberal divines would
+express genuine repugnance at Archbishop Carr's view of the war; yet
+some of the most liberal of these divines and laymen are almost as
+backward in another direction. They justify the world-process through
+which we are struggling on the ground that it will, we hope, issue in a
+nobler order of things: of the war, in particular, that hope is
+entertained, and to the war, accordingly, this theory of justification
+is applied. That is a case of the end justifying the means. Christian
+thinkers are advancing so rapidly and erratically that in some cases we
+are not clear whether the writer does or does not regard God as infinite
+in power and intelligence. We may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> ignore these few cases. The vast
+majority emphatically hold that view. In their regard we can say only
+what has been said a hundred times. Whether you speak of the
+world-process in general or any particular cruel phase of it, such as
+this war, you maintain that God chose, out of many conceivable ways, the
+one way that is marked by cruelty and suffering. An infinite God is not
+so confined in the choice of means. And just as we say of the
+world-process in general, that to build the sunnier lives of a remote
+generation on the sufferings of this and earlier generations implies a
+grave injustice to <i>us</i>, so we must say of the war. No spiritual
+advantages to those who survive will reconcile us to the suffering and
+the loss of those who fell in the tragic combat. I speak impersonally.
+It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I
+nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood
+over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing
+experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the whole ghastly orgy of
+blood and tears in Europe, I feel unutterable disdain of these paltry
+efforts to justify the ways of God to man.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let us look a little deeper into the matter. No doubt the plain
+statement that God "sent" or caused this war will excite a certain
+repugnance in many Christian minds. They will prefer to say that God
+"permitted" it. Man has "free will," and it is the plan of providence to
+give a certain play to this free will. When man has bruised his
+shins&mdash;more frequently the shins of other people&mdash;God may, on being
+supplicated sufficiently, issue his veto and put matters right. I am
+quite acquainted, from a severe theological education, with the more
+learned language in which this theory is expressed by theologians, but
+I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> prefer to deal with it as it exists in the words of most preachers
+and the minds of most Christians.</p>
+
+
+<p>It would be impossible here to deal at any length with the doctrine of
+free will. Unless you conceive it in some novel and irrelevant sense, as
+Professor Bergson does, it is a very much disputed thing amongst the
+experts whose business it is to inform us on the subject&mdash;our
+psychologists. The majority of modern psychologists seem to reject it
+altogether. On the other hand, no theologian has ever yet reconciled it
+in any intelligible scheme with the supposed omnipotence of God. But it
+is not necessary to enter into these abstruse considerations. Let us
+take the matter in the concrete.</p>
+
+
+<p>We look back to-day on a long series of processes and circumstances
+which culminate in the war. There is the whole history of Germany for a
+hundred and fifty years inspiring the German people with a bias toward
+aggressive war; there are the economic and geographical circumstances
+which, at the end of the nineteenth century, begin to make it think
+again of aggressive war; there is the overflowing population, bred by
+order of the clergy who stupidly condemn an artificial restriction of
+births; there is the coincident trouble of Austria with the Slavs, of
+England with its subject peoples, and so on. In the eyes of the careful
+student a hundred lines of circumstance and development have led to this
+war. The melodramatic idea that it all springs from the free will of the
+Kaiser, or of a group of soldiers and statesmen, need not be seriously
+considered. Moreover, even when we introduce the personal element&mdash;and
+the personality of the Kaiser has had a very considerable influence&mdash;it
+is foolish to throw the whole burden on free will.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> The mood and outlook
+and ambition of the Kaiser take their colour from his notoriously morbid
+nervous frame. In a word, you have a mighty concurrence of movements,
+whether acts of will or otherwise, converging in all parts of Europe
+toward this war. Was God indifferent to the whole of those movements?</p>
+
+
+<p>Those movements are particularly traceable in Europe during the last
+fourteen years. Before that there was a similar concurrence of movements
+eventuating in the South African War; and in the meantime a series of
+processes and circumstances had given us the Russo-Japanese War and the
+Balkan-Turkish War and the Mexican War. So we might go over the wars of
+the nineteenth century and all earlier wars. The "permissiveness" or
+indifference of the ruler of the universe grows amazingly. In the
+meantime we had mighty catastrophes like the sinking of the <i>Titanic</i>
+and other ships, the earthquakes at Messina and elsewhere, famines and
+epidemics and floods in various places, and great numbers of murders,
+railway and other accidents, etc. We begin to ask <i>where</i> the ruling of
+the universe comes in at all, and, as far as human events go, all that
+we can gather in the way of reply is that sometimes individuals who pray
+very fervently get their diseases healed or their coffers filled; and
+even these claims do not pass rational inquiry.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now here is the precise difficulty of the unbeliever, and this present
+tragedy makes it acute. We ask our neighbour, or seek in some learned
+theological treatise, what are the indications of this government of the
+universe, and we are told about the making of stars and the decoration
+of flowers and the putting of instincts into animals or pretty patterns
+on their skins. But when we point out that the really im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>portant thing
+in our part of the universe is this human life of ours, imperfectly
+protected as yet against disease and malice (which is largely disease)
+and natural forces, the theologian has no clear evidence to produce.
+Even the evidence he draws from stars and flowers and peacocks' tails
+and sunsets, with which he is, as a rule, very imperfectly acquainted,
+is, of course, heatedly disputed, and the proper authorities on these
+subjects are, on the whole, not well disposed toward his interpretation.
+But we need not consider that here. Where we should most logically
+expect the hand of Providence is in the human order, because in that
+order catastrophe is infinitely more important, in view of man's
+capacity for pain. Yet it is precisely in regard to this order that the
+theologian is vaguest and least satisfactory. He talks grandly of God
+moving every atom in the universe, counting the hairs of our heads,
+numbering (but not preventing) the fall of the sparrows, and so on; but
+when we ask for the evidence of God's concern with contemporary human
+events he is very vague if they are good events, and, if they are evil,
+he hastily disclaims any interference of the Deity. Some of our more
+advanced theologians are claiming that the finest improvement they have
+made in their science is to have brought God from <i>without</i> the universe
+(where no theologian had ever put him) and make him <i>immanent</i> in it.
+But they seem just as incapable as the others to trace his interposition
+in human events.</p>
+
+
+<p>Theologians still maintain a valiant and stubborn fight against
+scientific men, but they do not fight historians. They are very keen on
+maintaining the influence of God over atoms and stars and roses and
+birds, but not half so keen to vindicate it in the life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> of man. The
+story of the world, <i>our</i> world, may be divided into three chapters: a
+chapter describing the moulding of the globe and the rocks, a chapter
+describing the slow evolution of the plants and animals, and a chapter
+describing the antics and fortunes of man. Some may surrender the first
+chapter to science, some the second chapter, but it looks as if they all
+surrender the third. They have long been accustomed to surrender the
+early part, and very much the longer and more laborious part, of man's
+story to natural forces, or the devil. Then there was a melodramatic
+notion that God, after the lapse of hundreds of thousands of years,
+began to take an interest in one very small people and kept revealing
+things to it, and smiting its enemies, until Christianity was given to
+the world. History tells the story in a totally different way. We find
+the stream of moral and religious evolution flowing steadily on nineteen
+hundred years ago, much as we do to-day. At this point, of course, the
+theologian does make a struggle with the historian. In proportion to the
+imperfectness of his culture and the backwardness and conservatism of
+his Church, he fights for miraculous interpositions in human events
+nineteen hundred years ago. But we need not delay to examine that
+difference of opinion, because the later period suffices for my purpose.</p>
+
+
+<p>A few theologians, not well acquainted with history, see another
+miraculous interposition in the fourth century, when Christianity was
+established; and the Roman Catholic&mdash;in the intellectual rear, as
+usual&mdash;believes in hundreds of miraculous interpositions, in small
+matters, as late as the year 1914. But in order to take a broad view of
+the matter we may leave these controversies with the more reactionary on
+one side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> The history of Europe for the last fifteen centuries at least
+is now entrusted to able laymen, and it has been purged of divine
+interpositions. Innumerable myths and legends, often based on what are
+now acknowledged to be spurious documents, have been cast out of the
+science, and we are presented with a quite continuous and purely natural
+sequence of events. Religious historians like Bishop Creighton or Lord
+Bryce do not find their periods broken by divine interpositions; the
+writers of the Cambridge History do not occasionally arrest us before
+some great event and warn us that the chain of human causation seems to
+be obscure or discontinuous. There are, of course, problems of history,
+but they are not obscurities which, like the obscure places in science,
+tempt the theologian to enter and claim a divine interposition. The
+story is from beginning to end&mdash;to use Nietzsche's phrase&mdash;"human, all
+too human." On the whole, as it has been hitherto written, it is a story
+of wars, and, though patriotic piety puts its gloss on the issue of a
+war here and there, the historian does not find any serious problem in
+them. No French historian will now claim divine action in the Napoleonic
+wars, and assuredly few of us are prepared to see the finger of God in
+the fortunate issue of Prussia's many campaigns since Frederick the
+Great.</p>
+
+
+<p>Whatever we may think of the cosmic process generally, the human part of
+that process does not encourage a theological interpretation. Man is
+working out his own destiny, and doing it ill. We see him, like some
+pedlar plodding along a country road under his burdens, carrying through
+whole centuries institutions and ideas and follies that he will
+eventually shed. When he drops them, there is no more element<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> of
+miracle or revelation in his action than when he discovers the use of
+steam or of aluminium or of the spectroscope. His mind expands and his
+ideals rise. It is a little incongruous to suppose that some infinitely
+wiser and affectionate parent was looking on all the time and giving no
+assistance. In the dialogue between Mephistopheles and God which Goethe
+prefixes to his <i>Faust</i>, the devil obviously scores. In the sight of
+such an intelligence man must have made a pretty fool of himself during
+the last 1500 years. We human beings are more charitable. Take the whole
+story as the gradual development of human intelligence and emotion under
+unfavourable political conditions, hampered by a despotic and perverse
+clergy, and it seems natural enough.</p>
+
+
+<p>This is the impression one gets from history, and the nearer history is
+to our own time and the better we know it, the less it suggests a divine
+guidance. There is something parochial or rural about the average
+Christian way of looking at events. One day the German Christian goes to
+church to thank God for driving the Russians out of East Prussia; the
+next day the English Christian thanks the same God for killing or
+wounding 20,000 Germans at Neuve Chapelle&mdash;with the help of 350 guns.
+Yet such things as these are the only claims we have offered to us of
+the action of God in human events. Neither the steps that man takes
+onward nor the steps that he takes backward are ascribed to divine
+influence. All that is claimed is that when a ship goes down, for
+instance, he saves the saved, and "permits" the rest to be drowned; when
+a war has been raging for a few months by his "permission," he puts a
+stop to it when one army is worn out. The unbeliever is really<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> entitled
+to a good deal of sympathy for his inability to follow this tortuous
+reasoning with confidence. One cannot entirely blame him for being more
+interested in the heart of man than in the petals of a rose.</p>
+
+
+<p>These considerations are, of course, not novel. I am only applying to
+this special case of the war a difficulty that has been discussed in all
+ages, and has been acutely felt by very able religious thinkers. How a
+group of bishops can sit down to write, in very deliberate and elegant
+language, that such a calamity as this makes the soul more sensible of
+"the approach of Christ" is one of the many little mysteries of the
+clerical mind. It has precisely the opposite effect in any logical mind.
+When the way of life is smooth, and our nation or home is prospering, we
+may be genially disposed to think that God is near and is looking after
+us as well as the sparrows. But when a black storm bursts suddenly and
+disastrously on us; when the earth shakes their roofs on ten thousand of
+our fellows, or a great ship strikes a rock and pours a laughing crowd
+suddenly into the lap of death; when vast provinces are laid desolate by
+war, and we see the tens of thousands clasping the hand of their loved
+ones for the last time, it seems rather uncanny that this should suggest
+to any person the approach of Christ. To very many people it is a
+confirmation of the general impression they get from the world-process
+and the story of man: that these great forces deploy and interlace and
+build up and destroy without the slightest intervention from without.</p>
+
+
+<p>In our time, we must remember, this difficulty had already been
+enormously increased. St. Augustine, who felt the problem acutely in the
+prime of his intelligence, had really a very much lighter task than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the
+modern divine. He had merely to suggest why evil was permitted in the
+narrow world he knew; and he had the great advantage of being able to
+appeal to a primitive sin and primitive punishment of the race. The
+problem became more serious when original sin, or at least the notion
+that the race might justly be damned for one man's fault, was abandoned.
+It became graver still when science discovered the tombs of inhabitants
+of this globe who had lived during millions of earlier years, and showed
+that the very law of their life and progress was struggle against evil.
+Every attempt to minimise the struggle of those earlier ages has failed.
+At a time when there was no possibility of "spiritual advantage" there
+was acute consciousness of pain, the struggle and suffering were
+prodigious. Theistic literature of the last half century, growing more
+weary and more wistful in each decade, reflects the increasing
+difficulty. If any man can see in this war a relief of the difficulty,
+and not an appalling accentuation and illustration of it, he must be
+gifted with a peculiar type of mind and emotion. It is more probable
+that an increasing number will conclude that, if God is indifferent to
+these things, they will be indifferent to him. Professor William James,
+in his <i>Varieties of Religious Experience</i>, declared that the only gods
+the men of the new generation would recognise would be gods of some use
+to them. The war does not encourage the chances of the Christian God.</p>
+
+
+<p>A few modern religious thinkers seem to imagine that they have found
+some relief by devising the formula that God's plan is to "co-operate
+with man," and in those modern advances which I have freely admitted
+they see indications of this co-operation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> This new formula is not a
+whit better than the other phrases which have, at various stages, been
+regarded by religions people as profound thoughts. In the recent history
+of moral progress we have, as a rule, a minority of high-minded men and
+women struggling to impress their sentiments on the inert majority. The
+new theologian is not daunted in the application of his theory by the
+fact that a large proportion of these pioneers did not believe in God at
+all, so I will not discuss that aspect; though no doubt the plain man
+will find it interesting to trace how, in the earlier and more difficult
+days of modern humanism, so few of the reformers were Christian
+ministers and so many Rationalists. From the historical point of view,
+however, we find this line of development quite intelligible. We find,
+for instance, Robert Owen (a great Rationalist) advocating the
+substitution of arbitration for war nearly a century ago, and we
+discover the earlier sources of Owen's enthusiasm in English Radicals
+like Godwin, who were affected by the early French Revolutionaries, who
+had been influenced by Rousseau, and so on. It is a quite natural
+evolution of ideas, as they find a congenial soil in each generation in
+certain types of temperament. But where are the traces or what was the
+nature of God's co-operation with these men? Looking to their generally
+heterodox character and the hostility of the Churches to them, the idea
+is not without humour; but, even if we reconcile ourselves to this
+peculiar feature, anything in the nature of positive evidence of divine
+action is wholly lacking, and we can understand the whole process
+without it. The theory is merely a desperate and unfounded assertion of
+men who are determined that God shall not be left out.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>There is a further grave difficulty. One would imagine that the kind of
+paternal affection which is ascribed to God would have induced him to
+intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with
+the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the
+less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man.
+Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need
+judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even
+less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth
+and twentieth centuries seem able to dispense with his co-operation,
+while the ignorant and priest-ridden children of earlier ages could do
+little of themselves. The theologians who have found this new formula
+are of the more liberal school. They do not attribute all the blunders
+and crimes and failures of the Middle Ages to free will, to a sheer and
+deliberate obstinacy in clinging to evil. They realise the overpowering
+nature of the environment and the drastic discouragement by the clergy
+of anything like novelty or initiative in ethics. It was then that man
+needed God, if there is a God. But, on this theory, God argued with the
+academic wisdom of a medieval theologian; he concluded that medieval men
+were quite capable of originating modern ideas, and he would not
+co-operate until they did. The theory is preposterous in every respect.</p>
+
+
+<p>Finally, we have the very large class of candid or of hopelessly puzzled
+Christians who give up the matter as a mystery. They do not understand
+how this ruling of the universe which they seem to see clearly in stars
+and flowers should become so obscure or disappear altogether in the
+human order. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> realise that, if this war were an isolated
+occurrence, they might imagine God holding his hand for a season, for
+some reason unknown to us; but they know that it is not an isolated
+occurrence: it is part of the human order of things. It has been
+preceded by other wars at intervals of every few years, and war itself
+is only one of a series of catastrophes and calamities that splash the
+human chronicle with innocent blood. They give it up, sorrowfully, and
+find a thin consolation in learned formul&aelig; about the impossibility of a
+finite mind understanding an infinite mind, and so on: which give, as I
+say, thin consolation, for one may at least see that an infinite
+benevolence ought not to act worse than a moderate human benevolence.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now if there were any very strong evidence of divine ruling outside the
+human order, we might find a certain amount of logic in this position.
+The mystery of a God who moves the stars and inspires the bees, yet
+leaves man to his own unhappy impulses (after putting those impulses in
+him), would be, one imagines, painful enough; but if there were
+irresistible evidence that God does move the stars and quicken the bird
+and beast, we might be compelled to reconcile ourselves to that unhappy
+dilemma. There is, however, no such irresistible evidence. This is not
+the place to examine such evidence as is adduced. I must be content to
+recall the fact that it is all highly controverted; that theologians
+tear to pieces each other's "proofs" of the existence of God; and that a
+large and increasing body of cultivated men and women discard the
+evidence entirely. So that, in the last resort, the situation is this:
+on the one hand we have a number of very disputable suggestions, which
+are growing fainter in proportion as science investigates these matters,
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> divine action in stars and rocks and reptiles, and on the other hand
+we have a stupendous mass of suffering, starting millions of years ago
+at the very birth of consciousness and piled up mountains high in this
+year 1915, which no thinker has ever yet reconciled with the notion of a
+divine ruling of the life of man. This is a very grave and plain
+situation, and if the clergy have nothing more to say about it than to
+borrow from an ancient Hebrew certain offensive gibes at the unbeliever,
+or to offer us the kind of apologies we examined in the last chapter,
+one must conclude that they do not realise the situation. The war has
+terribly accentuated the most terrible difficulty they ever had to face.
+Whether there is intelligence manifested in nature is, after all, an
+academic question which does not profoundly stir the modern world.
+Whether there is benevolence, a moral personality, reflected in the
+course of man's history is the much more important question. And this
+appalling calamity will induce many to take a more candid view of the
+world-process and conclude that, as far as the critical eye can see,
+man's world seems to be left entirely to his own efforts, to his own
+crimes and blunders and aspirations.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>If the observations I have made in the preceding chapters are even
+approximately just, the hope which many of the clergy express, that
+there will be a religious revival at the close of the war, is very
+singular. No doubt it means, on the whole, that some advantage to
+religion will be sought in the flood of genial and generous emotion
+which will surge through the country. In Germany and Austria, one
+imagines, religion will have a rough experience. The people who wrote
+and repeated constantly, "Gott strafe England"&mdash;which, by the way, is
+another proof that the general German attitude is theological rather
+than humanist&mdash;will have a few serious questions to put to the clergy,
+as well as to their secular rulers. In France, despite the reports of
+interested people, there will be little change. The nation, being
+overwhelmingly Rationalistic, relied on its 75-centimetre guns rather
+than on prayer, and will find its wisdom justified. But in England and
+Russia, and in the backward Slav countries, there will be mighty
+flag-waving in Church, and no doubt a great number of not very
+thoughtful people will conclude that the clergy and the Y.M.C.A. and the
+Salvation Army have behaved very nicely over the whole affair, and there
+will be, for a time, an increased attendance at church.</p>
+
+
+<p>We may suppose that this emotional storm will not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> last long, and the
+nation will settle down to face the bill, the empty chairs at home, and
+the disorganisation of its industries. Then will arise the questions I
+have been endeavouring to answer in this little book. The clergy behaved
+very well during the war, short of volunteering in any conspicuous
+number for active service; but what is the sense of this lofty message
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men" which never produces any
+result? The Churches are fairly eager to join in the work of peace now
+that it is being promoted by large associations of laymen; but where, in
+the name of heaven, were they during these "ages of faith" which they
+bemoan? God may conceivably have been at work somewhere among the
+batteries or the infantry of the Allies&mdash;it is so very difficult to
+analyse these things&mdash;but we should be infinitely more grateful if he
+had asserted his power earlier and spared us all the bloodshed. He may
+be a very stern schoolmaster, teaching us a valuable lesson by means of
+this war; but we were really quite open to conviction if he had sent us
+the lesson in a more humane form. A great many good people may have
+derived spiritual advantages from the war, but the price was stupendous,
+and we would rather they got their spiritual advantages in another way.</p>
+
+
+<p>These questions and reflections must surely arise, and they will lead to
+larger reflections. Men will perceive the antithesis I pointed out
+between all that is claimed for Christianity in Europe and the actual
+condition of Europe; between the supposed luminous traces of the finger
+of God in the non-human world and the complete absence of them from the
+human world. From the samples of clerical eloquence which we have
+examined, we can hardly suppose that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> clergy will have great success
+in meeting the inquirers. An enormous proportion of their followers, of
+course, will not ask questions, or will be satisfied with anything in
+the nature of an answer. I heard a group of men discussing the subject
+in a rural ale-house, and the most intelligent man in the group, to
+whom, as an educated visitor, the natives looked up with respect, said:
+"War is God's way of purifying and bracing nations from time to time."
+This sort of stuff pacifies hundreds of thousands: like the stuff that
+Archbishop Carr found it possible to put before his Australian
+Catholics. But inquiry and reflection grow among the adherents of the
+Churches, and, although the Press generally refuses to bring books of
+this character to the notice of the public, and clergymen often stoop to
+the most despicable means to exclude them from bookstalls and shops,
+they seem to find a fairly large public to-day. Thinking is as needful
+an exercise for the mind as work is for the body, and the only plausible
+ground on which you can seek to suppress thinking about Christianity is
+the fear that it will not be good for Christianity.</p>
+
+
+<p>Then we shall have the next and inevitable question: What would you put
+in the place of Christianity? Young men in various parts of the country
+hurl that question at one as if it were really very serious, putting an
+end to all dispute. Any person who is quite candid and sincere about
+these matters can find the material for an answer easily enough. Take
+France. Forty years ago the nation was overwhelmingly Christian; to-day
+it is overwhelmingly non-Christian. It has not put anything in the place
+of Christianity, and has prospered remarkably. There is a legacy of what
+is called vice which comes down from earlier religious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> times, but any
+person who cares to examine criminal and other statistics, the only
+positive tests of a nation's health, will find that France has been
+extraordinarily successful without Christianity and without putting
+anything in its place. There are, it is true, moral lessons in its
+schools, but I would not claim that they are much responsible: the
+system is imperfect, and the teachers not well equipped. Take our ally
+Japan. The moral discipline of the nation, which, in spite of some
+recent deterioration through Western influence, is admirable, does not
+rest on religious foundations. Take London or any metropolis of modern
+Europe. The bulk of the people have ceased to receive any influence from
+the representatives of Christianity, yet there has been moral progress
+instead of deterioration. Those who speak of degeneration in London or
+Paris do not accurately know and estimate the state of those cities in
+more religious times.</p>
+
+
+<p>This experience might be enlarged indefinitely, but one or two instances
+will suffice for my purpose. The soundness of these instances which I
+quote I have established elsewhere, and the general truth to which I
+refer may be sufficiently gathered from the words of the clergy
+themselves. The rhetorical way in which they characterise our times is
+more or less typical of the carelessness of their judgments and the
+strength of their prejudices. One group of clerical writers, which
+generally includes the reigning Pope, speak in the darkest terms of our
+age and suggest that a sensible degeneration has followed the decrease
+of the influence of the Churches. Another group, considering the
+remarkable spread of idealism in our generation, the growing demand for
+peace, justice, and sobriety, claim that this moral progress, which they
+cannot deny, is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> due to some tardy recognition of the spirit of Christ:
+a strange contention, seeing that our age is less and less willing to
+hear the words of Christ and ascribes its sentiments to entirely
+different inspiration. Hence there are a few who frankly admit that the
+idealism of modern times is to them a rebuke and a mystery. One of these
+more sensitive religious writers once confessed to me that the fact that
+the times became better while the influence of Christianity grew less
+was to him a perplexing truth.</p>
+
+
+<p>The really honest social student, who does not measure his age by his
+prejudices, but fashions his theories according to the carefully
+ascertained facts, will try to discover the causes of this phenomenon.
+In those wide and varied areas where it is observed, we cannot say that
+anything has taken the place of Christianity. The Press sometimes
+flatters itself that it has taken the place of the pulpit, but opinions
+will differ in regard to its efficacy as a moral agency. On the whole,
+it is too apt to reflect the moral sentiments of the more reactionary,
+who are generally the most self-assertive, and it has no moral, as
+distinct from political, leadership. Then there are Ethical and kindred
+societies which hold "services" of a humanitarian character, and are to
+many people a substitute for the Christian Churches. Their influence is,
+however, restricted to a few thousand people in the whole country, and
+signs are not wanting that their usefulness will be only transitory. The
+experience of any careful observer is that the mass of people who cease
+to attend church desire and need no substitute whatever for
+Christianity. The Rationalist literature which many of them read is, as
+a rule, of a high idealist character; but here again the influence is
+very re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>stricted. No organised influence is at work to any great extent
+as a successor to Christianity, yet it is indubitable that, as Christian
+influence wanes, the temper of the age improves.</p>
+
+
+<p>This improvement must have an adequate cause, and it would be merely
+another form of crude social reasoning and of sectarian prejudice to
+say, in the rich language of the older anti-clericals, that breaking
+"the fetters of superstition and priestcraft" led of itself to such a
+result. But this sanguine rhetoric does contain or obscure a certain
+truth. In plain human language, when you prevent a man from relying on
+the old traditional inspirations, he may for a time be tempted to act
+without inspiration. In the matter of his dealings with his fellows it
+is an undeniable fact that, on the whole, he has not been thus tempted.
+It is absurd to heap up all the contemporary instances of corruption in
+trade and politics, looseness in domestic life, and so on, unless you
+make a similar study of the vices and crimes of an earlier and more
+Christian generation, and carefully compare the two. It is not a
+question whether there is evil in our generation; it is a question
+whether there is more or less evil than in earlier generations. I must
+be pardoned for reiterating this, because, although this comparison is
+essential for forming an accurate judgment on the moral effect of the
+decay of Christianity, it is rarely instituted with the least pretence
+of rigour. I have sufficiently studied it in earlier works (especially
+<i>The Bible in Europe</i>), and will not repeat the facts. Cotter Morison,
+whom I quoted on an early page, was wrong in his expectation. The change
+from Christian to humanist inspiration is taking place without disorder
+and with increasing advantage.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The solution of this apparent problem is really not obscure. If the
+genuine basis of human conduct needed an elaborate search&mdash;if it had to
+be revealed by a Deity or laboriously established by moral theologians
+or moral philosophers&mdash;no doubt the age of transition would be an age of
+disorder, and a very comprehensive educational organisation would be
+needed. But the true basis of human conduct is simple. There are, of
+course, Rationalists who feel that some very abstruse "science of
+ethics" has to be constructed as the solid foundation of conduct; but
+this has as little relation to the conduct of ordinary men as the
+learned pedants of the science of prosody have to ordinary speakers of
+prose. Experience is the real base and guide of conduct, and it forces
+itself on every man and woman, even on the child. "Do unto others as you
+would that they should do unto you" is the first principle of morals;
+and to inculcate it you need neither the thunders of Jupiter nor the
+impressive abstractions of a science of ethics: nor do you need any
+moral genius or philosophical skill to discover it. It is a rule of life
+that suggests itself spontaneously. It is a natural and prompt
+expression of the fact that our life is social: our acts have the
+closest relation to others besides ourselves. Now and again, perhaps, a
+man is tempted to assert his own personality, or seek his own
+gratification, in such a way as to ignore his fellows; but he is usually
+arrested before long by the simple experience that he himself suffers
+from the actions of others just as they may suffer from his conduct. It
+is a lesson of life which one needs no power of analysis to learn.</p>
+
+
+<p>And the chief reason why the abandonment of the old doctrines is
+proceeding without any moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> degeneration is that this experience was
+really always the basis of general morality. We need not question&mdash;it
+would be absurd to question&mdash;that refined natures have received moral
+aid from their belief in the presence of God, or in a desire to please
+God by accepting the law of virtue as a declaration of his will; though
+we must be equally candid in admitting that men and women of this nature
+have not been observed to deteriorate when they sacrifice their
+religious beliefs, as thousands of them have done. On the other hand, we
+will hardly question that numbers of people of coarser nature have been
+deterred from evil-doing by dread of supernatural punishment. It is,
+however, notorious in the moral history of Europe that these religious
+beliefs have been consistent with a vast amount of transgression of the
+decalogue: more than we witness in any civilised country in our own
+time. How, then, are we to discover what were the real springs of
+conduct in the mass of ordinarily decent people? It seems to me that the
+only accurate method is to avoid theories and consider people in the
+flesh. Do our Christian friends&mdash;did we ourselves in Christian
+days&mdash;refrain from lying, dishonesty, injustice, cruelty, and injury,
+solely or mainly because God forbids them or will punish them? I have
+not met the man, except in the imaginative pages of religious
+controversy, who confessed that he would stoop freely to these things if
+there were no Christian prohibition. The mainspring of ordinary decent
+conduct in any educated community has always been a perception of its
+human and social value.</p>
+
+
+<p>The only line of the decalogue about which there is likely to be any
+dispute in this regard is that putting restraint on sexual relations. I
+have not to consider<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> here a subject so remote from my immediate
+interest, and will observe only that any act which hurts either an
+individual or the social interest will as plainly come under a
+humanitarian law as the practice of lying: acts which inflict no injury
+and have been forbidden only on mystic grounds are not likely to remain
+on the moral code of the future. But I am concerned here with a definite
+issue, and need discuss general morality only in so far as that issue is
+affected.</p>
+
+
+<p>Here, at least, the way of the humanitarian is plain. Sermons on the
+brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God have been totally
+ineffective to prevent war and abolish militarism. There is something
+incongruous in the introduction into a modern peace-meeting of some
+clerical speaker who talks unctuously about the great promise and
+precept of Christianity. The meeting itself, being held nineteen
+centuries after the promise was made, is a sufficient indication of its
+futility. No progress was made or seriously attempted in the work of
+peace until a genuine human passion was substituted for that empty
+phraseology. The brotherhood of men was, in the Christian sense of that
+phrase, too abstruse and precarious a conclusion to be of use in such a
+struggle. The plain fact is that it was of no use, and is of no use
+to-day. There is, indeed, reason to think that we should make more
+progress if we entirely discarded figures of speech like "the
+brotherhood of men." The fact that we are all children of God, or
+children of Eve, or children of some Tertiary anthropoid, does not very
+obviously impose on us the duty not to take up arms in an international
+quarrel.</p>
+
+
+<p>The ultimate basis of morality is, as Schopenhauer said, sympathy,
+though in an advanced social order<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> this sentiment approves itself to
+the intellect, and its requirements may be precisely formulated by
+reason. One is not sure whether there will not be more morality in the
+world when the word "morality," with all its mystic entanglements, is
+discarded, and we speak plainly of social law. Violence, the infliction
+of pain and injustice, is one of the most obvious infractions of social
+law, quite apart from any religious commandments. Its social evil is so
+obvious that the community has, at an early date in its development,
+elaborated a special machinery for restraining it, and has imposed
+penalties in this world, whatever it thinks about the next. There may be
+questions raised, and one can understand people who are confined to a
+religious environment feeling a genuine concern, about other sections of
+moral law; but it would be obviously absurd to think that a humanitarian
+ethic would fail here. There have been attempts in modern times to
+question the validity of ethical law altogether. In so far as this
+movement aims at stripping moral law of its mysticism and fearlessly
+investigating its traditional content, it is admirable and will grow;
+but in so far as these moral rebels would resent restraint of any kind,
+and pronounce the freedom of every individual impulse, they seem to
+overlook a factor of great importance&mdash;the impulse of retaliation. A
+pretty state of society we should have if such a theory were generally,
+or largely, carried into practice.</p>
+
+
+<p>But these are academic vagaries, like those of the mystic or the moral
+theologian. Whatever be the future fortune of Christian legends, men are
+not likely to sacrifice the peace and security of social life to such
+theories of freedom any more than they are likely to expose property to
+a general scramble. The instinct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> of sympathy is now growing deeper in
+every century. Most of the great improvements of social life (in its
+widest sense) during the nineteenth century, which we have inherited,
+were due to that development of sympathy. It matters not whether the
+reformer was Christian or non-Christian&mdash;Elizabeth Fry and Florence
+Nightingale or Robert Owen and John Stuart Mill&mdash;the impulse was
+sympathy with suffering fellow-humans. All the hope of improvement in
+the twentieth century looks to a continued growth of that sentiment. It
+becomes a veritable passion in certain natures, as long as there are
+large and cruel evils to redress; and this passion of a few leading
+spirits, communicating something of its fire to the colder mass, is the
+great cause of progress. Surely that is the correct interpretation of
+the progressive life of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries? Men
+realised that to cultivate sympathy because it was enjoined by religion
+was a more or less mercantile procedure: it was worth cultivating for
+its own sake.</p>
+
+
+<p>Here we have the reply to those who, unfamiliar with any but their own
+religious environment, ask what place there will be for sympathy in an
+intellectual or nationalistic age. It is a very grave error to suppose
+either that our age is becoming less emotional or that Rationalism has
+no place for emotions. In pursuing its task during the nineteenth
+century Rationalism was an intensely emotional movement. Mr G.&nbsp;K.
+Chesterton, in his <i>Victorian Age in Literature</i>, speaks of J.&nbsp;S. Mill's
+"hard rationalism in religion" and "hard egoism in ethics." Like very
+many other statements in that lamentable book, these are inexplicably
+unjust. Mill was so far from being "hard" in religion that he ended his
+days in a kind of senti<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>mental theism; he was so far from being a "hard
+egoist" in ethics that he declared that he would burn in hell for ever
+rather than lie at the supposed bidding of a Deity. Robert Ingersoll,
+the most popular Rationalist of that age, was&mdash;I judge from his private
+letters, not his ornate speeches&mdash;a man of the most tender and fine
+sentiment. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that, because we do not
+admit emotion to be a test of the accuracy of statements of fact (as all
+religious dogmas claim to be), we do not find any room for emotion in
+life. Is the whole of man's life an affirmation about reality or
+criticism of such affirmation? This supposed "hardness"&mdash;I detest these
+vague phrases, but one knows what is meant&mdash;of the Rationalist temper is
+one of the strangest myths the clergy have invented.</p>
+
+
+<p>Reason not merely approves, but enjoins, the cultivation of sentiment.
+When the sentiment in question is one that shows a power of transforming
+life and impelling men to struggle against pain and evil, reason
+applauds it as one of the most valuable forces we can cultivate. Such,
+plainly, is the sentiment of sympathy. We look back to-day with horror
+on the industrial and social condition of England in the earlier part of
+the nineteenth century: the burdened lives and few gross pleasures of
+the workers, the horrible cellar-homes of the poor, the ghastly
+treatment of child-workers, the stupid and brutal herding of criminals,
+the tragedies of asylums and workhouses, the fearful political
+corruption and despotism, the subjection of women, the revolting
+proportions of the birth-rate and death-rate. We have still much to do
+to redeem our civilisation from medieval errors, but when one
+contemplates the social revolution that human sympathy has brought about
+in the life of England, one feels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> that this, and not the long-futile
+teaching of Christianity, is the hope of the future. Christian preaching
+of virtue has been individualistic. Even in our time the clergy hesitate
+and are divided in face of social problems which plainly involve moral
+principles. But the humanitarian ethic is essentially social, and this
+passion of sympathy is its chief root.</p>
+
+
+<p>We wish, then, not to substitute any creed or organisation for
+Christianity, but to sweep away these primitive or medieval speculations
+about life, and let the human mind and human heart increasingly devote
+themselves, directly, to human interests. In discussing the question of
+peace and war, the application is obvious. We enclose or dispatch the
+murderer, lest some fresh grave act of violence be perpetrated. We agree
+that the violent and premature termination of a life is the most serious
+transgression of social law that a man can perpetrate. Next to it we put
+rape, mutilation, the destruction of a man's home or fortune; all acts,
+in a word, that come nearest to it in threatening or causing the
+greatest desolation. Yet we have suffered, age after age, that every few
+years all these acts should be gathered into one mighty outrage and
+showered upon whole populations. The time will come when men will read
+with bewilderment the things that have been written about warfare in the
+nineteenth, and even the twentieth, century. The men of clear judgment
+and sound emotion of some coming age will see anguish rising, as vapour
+does from some tropical sea, from our vast battle-fields. They will read
+of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for
+Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors
+to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands
+of men writhe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and
+children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the
+superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and
+shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they
+will see that same generation in a few months grow dully indifferent to,
+if not actively supporting, the military system which invariably brings
+these horrors every few years upon the world. They will read of social
+aspiration spreading through our civilisation, and statesmen regretting
+that want of funds alone prevents them from remedying our social ills;
+and they will read how Europe in one year wasted in butchery the
+resources that might have renovated its disfigured civilisation, and the
+next year complacently shouldered its military burden, its annual waste
+of a thousand millions sterling, with the prospect of a costlier war
+than ever.</p>
+
+
+<p>In face of this situation the question, What would you put in place of
+Christianity? is a mere mockery. One can see some pertinence and use in
+the question: How shall we induce the Christian Churches to employ their
+still great resources in helping to bring on the reign of peace? But it
+is not to them that we now look for redemption. It is to the
+humanitarian spirit, the clearer reason, of our age. I have described
+the situation in terms of emotion, because thus it spontaneously rises
+before me; but it may be recorded in terms of pure reason. We maintain
+in Europe a machinery for settling international quarrels which costs us
+more than a thousand millions sterling annually, while we could erect at
+a cost of a few thousands annually an efficient machinery for dealing
+with those quarrels, and for a few millions we could add the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> machinery
+for carrying out its decisions. We boast that our civilisation is
+founded on justice; yet, of the two types of machinery for adjusting
+quarrels, we retain the one that is the least possible adapted for
+securing the triumph of justice and discard the one that is
+pre-eminently fitted to secure it. We flatter ourselves that we rise
+above the savage in enjoying security of life and property, and we
+retain this system though we know that, periodically, it will invade
+life and property on a scale that surpasses the experience of the savage
+as much as a Dreadnought surpasses a canoe.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is just as easy to state our situation in terms of reason as in terms
+of sentiment: it would not be easy to say in which guise it is ugliest.
+Let us talk no more nonsense about needing religion to help us to get
+rid of this atrocious nightmare. It drives both reason and sentiment to
+the brink of insanity. Both protest against it with every particle of
+their energy. Why Christianity failed to protest against it in fifteen
+hundred years may or may not be obscure; but there is no obscurity
+whatever about the probable effect on militarism and war of a
+cultivation of reason and sympathy.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Many a reform has been actually retarded by the use of rhetoric. An
+outpour of vehement language seems to release, both in the speaker and
+in the assenting audience, a part of that energy which ought to issue in
+action. It has been one of the grave blunders of the Churches that they
+thought their function ended with the eloquent announcement that men
+were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> brothers. We must be more practical. Now, while the imagination of
+the world is filled with the horrors of war, and sympathy is ready to
+fire us with a mighty energy, is one of the great opportunities of
+peace. One may trust that, after this experience, the Churches will
+awaken to the implications of their moral doctrine and set to work to
+impress it emphatically and repeatedly, as a moral duty, on their
+followers. It is, however, not impossible that, with all their
+scoutmasters and chaplains and services of thanksgiving for victory, a
+very large part of the clergy will find themselves so closely allied
+with militarism when the war is over, so confused in their appreciation
+of what it has done for us, that they will continue to mumble only
+general principles and halting counsels. In any case, in the cities and
+large towns of this kingdom, where are found the effective controllers
+of our destiny, the majority do not any longer sit at the feet of the
+clergy. Precise statistical observation has shown this.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let us remember that the one task before us is to inspire the <i>majority</i>
+in each civilised nation with a determination that the system shall end.
+The only practical difficulty of considerable magnitude is the economic
+difficulty: the disorganisation of the industrial world by suppressing
+war-industries and large standing armies. It is, however, foolish to
+regard this as an obstacle to disarmament, since&mdash;to put an extreme
+case&mdash;it would be more profitable to a nation to maintain these men in
+idleness than run the risk of another war. For disarmament itself what
+is needed is that half a dozen, at least, of the great Powers shall
+agree to submit <i>all</i> quarrels to arbitration, and reduce their armies
+to the proportions of an international police, at the service of the
+international tribunal and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> for use (under its permit) against lower
+peoples who turn aggressive. No one doubts that this can be done when
+the Powers agree to do it. But for one reason or other, which I need not
+discuss, the Governments will probably not do this until a majority of
+the electorate indicate a resolute demand for it. The immediate task is
+to secure this majority by education; and the work of education will be
+best conducted by vast non-sectarian peace-organisations. The mixture of
+futile Christian phraseology and genuine humanitarian interests in some
+of these movements has been hitherto a grave disadvantage. The movement
+has been compelled to split into sectarian branches, and has
+proportionately lost efficacy. If the clergy insist on winning prestige
+for themselves, or respect and recognition for their doctrines, by
+acting in these bodies, they are again hampering the work of reform. A
+great national agitation, linked with similar agitations in other lands,
+avoiding Christian formul&aelig; as well as anti-Christian reproaches, will
+alone secure the object.</p>
+
+
+<p>I confess&mdash;with ardent hope that I may be wrong&mdash;that I expect no
+immediate realisation of the reform. It may take years, even after the
+grim lesson that militarism has given us, to inspire the majority of our
+people with an unsleeping and irresistible demand, and the work will
+grow more arduous as the memory of the hardships of the war fades. On
+the day on which I write this I have listened to the conversation, in a
+train, of a wealthy, refined, and cultivated Churchwoman. "I said to my
+son when he set out," she observed, with a laugh, to her neighbour,
+"that it was far better for him to get shot than to die of diphtheria or
+something at home." If that sentiment, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> obtuseness to the massive
+horrors of war even when a son was involved, is widespread, the outlook
+is dark. One fears that it is not very promising.</p>
+
+
+<p>The lady I quote would read these pages, if she could constrain herself
+to do so, with a genuine shudder. Abandon Christianity! She would
+volubly reel off the eloquent forecasts of the doom of society which she
+has heard from a hundred pulpits. Meantime she is one of the gravest
+obstacles (as a type of her class) to the removal from society of one of
+its most crushing burdens and most criminal usages. To me her class
+illustrates the limitations of Christianity, and it confirms me in the
+belief that we shall make more rapid progress without it. She was a lady
+of keen sympathies and of great activity for others: the kind of woman
+who, as she would put it, practised her Christianity. Yet in face of
+this mighty disorder she showed at once the failure of Christianity and
+the reason of it. Her genuine human sympathy was directed by an ancient
+and outworn code of duties. Where Christianity had delivered no clear
+message, the expanding of her sympathy was barred. War was part of the
+established order of things. She could even cheat her maternal sentiment
+with thin fallacies, because they reconciled her to what the Church had
+not condemned. She had never seen the vision of peace, never grasped the
+comparatively easy alternative to war.</p>
+
+
+<p>This, in general terms, is what one means by the expectation that a
+surrender of Christian doctrines will certainly not check the growth of
+sympathy, and is more likely to promote it. It will direct itself
+spontaneously to departments of suffering to which the Church had not
+directed it. But we should be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> foolish to rely on this free growth and
+spontaneous application of sympathy. It must be cultivated: our
+generation must be educated to a sense of its value. As far as the child
+is concerned, the need is plain. Children do not merely have veins of
+cruelty; they have, as comparative psychology knows, the blood and
+impulses of primitive man. The general impulse of a healthy boy is to
+exact an eye for an eye: the impulse which it is the supreme care of a
+modern State to curb in its citizens. To educate such children in
+military history, whether of ancient Jews or medieval Englishmen or
+modern Germans, is, as William II knows, the best means of maintaining
+war. As to the New Testament, its language is not addressed to children,
+its sentiments are often so obviously impracticable that it defeats the
+end of education, and its precepts and counsels are so emphatically
+based on a disputable reward in heaven that their ethic savours of a
+risky commercial speculation. We must abandon "Bible lessons," and teach
+children to be human.</p>
+
+
+<p>But for the work of education to end when the child leaves the school is
+one of the crudities of our elementary civilisation. The human material
+is just becoming fit for the efforts of the educator when the child
+leaves school, yet from that moment we leave it to the casual and
+largely pernicious influences of its environment. Some day, perhaps, our
+education department will be more seriously concerned about the youth
+and the adult than about impressing a few facts of history and geography
+on the memory of the child: even if it did no more than organise and
+direct the innumerable foundations and voluntary organisations which
+actually exist, and bring them into living and practical contact with
+our splendid museums and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> libraries and art-collections, a vast amount
+could be done in the education of the adult. Meantime a persistent,
+comprehensive, intensely earnest propaganda of peace is needed. Since I
+wrote a little work on those lines in 1899 I have had fifteen years'
+experience of preaching the gospel of peace, and know well how
+convincing are its arguments and how little it has to overcome except
+inertia. We need only to help the imagination of the mass of people; to
+put clearly before them the comparative easiness and the incalculable
+value of the change. Christianity has not tried and failed; it has not
+even tried. It has wasted its resources in generalities which have
+proved wholly futile. We must speak as men to men; and men will be more
+open to conviction when we plead that, not the supposed commands of a
+Galilean preacher of nineteen hundred years ago, but their own highest
+and most sacred instincts, bid them lay down their arms and inaugurate
+the age of international peace.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 33%; height: 2px;" />
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>The Service of Man</i> (<i>6d.</i> edition), p. 16.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> As I write, the Press describes Canon Green of Burnley as
+saying that "the war is a divine judgment on the world&mdash;England for the
+last ten years has been God-forgetting, drunken, immoral."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Let me again guard myself against misrepresentation. Were I
+of military age, I should to-day be in the trenches. The men who, as
+long as the military system is retained, expose their lives in our
+defence have my entire respect and gratitude. It is the system I
+impugn.</p>
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 33%; height: 2px;" />
+<div style="text-align: center;">PRINTED BY WATTS &amp; CO., JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The War and the Churches, by Joseph McCabe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The War and the Churches
+
+
+Author: Joseph McCabe
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2006  [eBook #18650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Irma Spehar and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
+
+by
+
+JOSEPH McCABE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited]
+London: Watts & Co. 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+WORKS BY THE AUTHOR
+
+_Modern Rationalism_ (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-
+
+_Peter Abelard_ (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.
+
+_Saint Augustine and his Age_ (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.
+
+_Twelve Years in a Monastery_ (Smith Elder), 3rd ed. _6d._ and 1/-
+
+_Life in a Modern Monastery_ (Grant Richards). 6/-
+
+_Life and Letters of G. J. Holyoake_ (Watts), 2 vols. L1/1/-
+
+_Talleyrand_ (Hutchinson). 14/-
+
+_The Iron Cardinal_ (Nash). 12/-
+
+_Goethe_ (Nash). 15/-
+
+_A Candid History of the Jesuits_ (Nash). 10/6.
+
+_The Evolution of Mind_ (Black). 5/-
+
+_Evolution_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
+
+_Prehistoric Man_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
+
+_The Principles of Evolution_ (The Nation's Library). 1/-
+
+_The Decay of the Church of Rome_ (Methuen), 2nd ed. 7/6.
+
+_The Story of Evolution_ (Hutchinson), 2nd ed. 7/6.
+
+_The Empresses of Rome_ (Methuen). 12/6.
+
+_The Empresses of Constantinople_ (Methuen). 12/6.
+
+_Church Discipline_ (Duckworth). 3/6.
+
+_Can we Disarm?_ (Heinemann). 2/6.
+
+_In the Shade of the Cloister_ (pseudonymous--Constable). 6/-
+
+_The Bible in Europe_ (Watts). 3/6.
+
+_The Religion of Woman_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_Woman in Political Evolution_ (Watts). _6d._
+
+_Haeckel's Critics Answered_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_From Rome to Rationalism_ (Watts), 4th ed. _4d._
+
+_The Origin of Life_ (Watts). 1/-
+
+_Secular Education_ (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-
+
+_The Martyrdom of Ferrer_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
+
+_The Religion of the Twentieth Century_ (Watts). 1/-
+
+_A Hundred Years of Education Controversy_ (Watts). _3d._
+
+_The Existence of God_ (Watts). _9d._
+
+_Shakespeare and Goethe_ (Cole). _6d._
+
+_George Bernard Shaw_ (Kegan Paul). 7/6.
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+_The Religion of Sir Oliver Lodge_ (Watts). 2/-
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The searching crisis through which the nation is passing must have the
+effect of securing grave consideration for many aspects of our life and
+institutions. We have already traversed the acute stage of suspense, and
+are gradually becoming sensible of these wider considerations. It was
+natural that for a prolonged period the disturbance of our economic
+conditions, the anxiety for the safety of our nation in face of an
+appalling menace, the personal concern of millions about the lives of
+sons or brothers who have bravely responded to the call, should keep our
+thoughts enchained to the daily or hourly fortunes of the field of
+battle. Now that the initial disorder has been allayed and we have
+attained a quiet and reasonable confidence in the issue, we turn to
+other and broader aspects of this mighty event of our generation. How
+comes it that the most enlightened century the world has yet seen should
+be thus darkened by one of the bloodiest and most calamitous wars that
+have ever spread their awful wings over the life of man? Where is all
+the optimism of yesterday? Must we reconsider our reasoned boast that
+our civilisation has lifted the life of man to a level hitherto
+unattained? Is there something entirely and most mischievously wrong
+with the foundations of modern civilisation?
+
+A dozen such questions will press for an answer, but it will be granted
+that one of the most urgent and most interesting of the many grave
+considerations which the war suggests is its relation to the prevailing
+creeds and standards of conduct. The war coincides with an advanced
+stage of what is called the spread of unbelief. In each of the nations
+of Europe which are engaged in this awful struggle complaints have been
+made every year for the last two or three generations that Christianity
+is losing its moral control of the white race. In the cities, especially
+in the capitals, of Europe there has been a proved and acknowledged
+decay of church-going; and, however much we may be disposed to think
+that these millions who no longer attend church retain in their minds
+the beliefs of their fathers, the slender circulation of religious
+literature makes it plain that the vast majority of them do not, in
+point of fact, receive either the spoken or written message of the
+Christian Church. In the great cities--and it is undoubted that the life
+of a nation is mainly controlled by its cities--there has been an
+increasing reluctance to listen to the authoritative exponents of the
+Christian gospel.
+
+A number of the clergy have very naturally noticed and stressed this
+coincidence. Prelates of high authority have, as we shall see, even
+declared that the war is a scourge deliberately laid on the back of
+mankind by the Almighty on account of this spreading infidelity. As a
+rule, the clergy shrink from advocating a theory which has such grave
+implications as this has, and they are content to submit the more
+plausible suggestion, that the decay of the Christian standard of
+conduct in the mind of a large proportion of our generation accounts for
+this tragic combat of nations. A distinguished Positivist writer, Mr. J.
+Cotter Morison, commenting in the last generation on the decay of
+Christian belief, expressed some such concern in the following terms:
+
+     "It would be rash to expect that a transition, unprecedented for
+     its width and difficulty, from theology to positivism, from the
+     service of God to the service of Man, could be accomplished without
+     jeopardy. Signs are not wanting that the prevalent anarchy in
+     thought is leading to anarchy in morals. Numbers who have put off
+     belief in God have not put on belief in Humanity. A common and
+     lofty standard of duty is being trampled down in the fierce battle
+     of incompatible principles."[1]
+
+It is true that in the work from which I quote[1] the learned, if
+somewhat nervous, Positivist does not, by his masterly survey of the
+moral history of Europe, afford us the least reason to think that we
+have really deteriorated from the standard of conduct set us by earlier
+generations, but his words do tend to press on our notice the claim of
+many writers, clerical and non-clerical, that we are returning from
+Christianity to Paganism, from a settled moral discipline to an
+unhealthy moral scepticism. Can one entirely and safely reconstruct the
+bases of personal and national conduct in one or two generations?
+
+This very plain and plausible theory is, however, exposed to criticism
+from other points of view. The clergy as a body are not at all willing
+to concede that the decay of belief has spread as far as the theory
+would suggest. In order to suppose that the life of Europe has, in a
+matter of the gravest importance, been directed by a non-Christian
+spirit, one must assume that at least the majority in each nation have
+deserted the traditional creed. It is by no means conceded or
+established that the fighting nations have ceased to be predominantly
+Christian. Indeed, if we confine the awful responsibility for this
+tragedy, as the evidence compels us, to Germany and Austria-Hungary, we
+are casting it upon the two nations which have been the chief
+representatives in Europe of the two leading branches of the Church.
+Most assuredly no prelate of either country would admit that his nation
+has ceased to be Christian or surrendered its life to non-Christian
+impulses; and in our own country we have frequently been assured of late
+years that the real power of Christianity was never greater.
+
+Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
+practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
+becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
+responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
+not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
+and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind departed from some
+admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
+religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
+arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
+in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
+not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
+which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
+Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
+assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it an
+element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
+employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends also
+to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be prolonged
+into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the Thirty
+Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance of
+ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
+modern war. Nor may we forget that it is the modern spirit which has
+claimed some alleviation of the horrors of the field, and that the
+majority of the nations engaged in the present struggle have observed
+the new rules.
+
+These considerations show that the problem is less simple and more
+serious than is often supposed, and I set out to discuss each of them
+with some fullness. That the war has _no_ relation to the Churches will
+hardly be claimed by anybody. Such a claim would mean that they were
+indifferent to one of the very gravest phases of human conduct, or
+wholly unable to influence it. Nor can we avoid the issue by pleading
+that Christianity approves and blesses a just defensive war, and that,
+since the share of this country in the war is entirely just and
+defensive, we have no moral problem to consider. I have assuredly no
+intention of questioning either the justice of Britain's conduct or the
+prudence of the Churches in adapting the maxims of the Sermon on the
+Mount to the practical needs of life. If and when a nation sees its life
+and prosperity threatened by an ambitious or a jealous neighbour, one
+cannot but admire its clergy for joining in the advocacy of an efficient
+and triumphant defence. But this is merely a superficial and proximate
+consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
+it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
+the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
+an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
+moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
+Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding of
+the conduct of Europe.
+
+But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
+influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most
+interesting questions suggested by the relation of the war to the
+prevailing religion. The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day
+raises again in its most acute form the problem of evil and Providence.
+More than two thousand years ago, as _Job_ reminds us, some difficulty
+was experienced in justifying the ways of God to men. The most
+penetrating thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once
+more with the problem, as if no word had been written on it; and he
+wrestled in vain. A century and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake
+destroyed forty thousand Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal
+unsuccess, to vindicate Providence with the faint hope of the Deist.
+Modern science, prolonging the sufferings of living things over earlier
+millions of years, has made that problem one of the great issues of our
+age, and this dread spectacle of _human_ nature red in tooth and claw
+brings it impressively before us. Is the work of God restricted to
+counting the hairs of the head, and not enlarged to check the murderous
+thoughts in the human brain? Nay, when we survey those horrid stretches
+of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated
+bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of
+their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile
+marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose
+flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic
+feeling alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions
+of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss--how can we repeat
+the ancient assurance that God _does_ count the hairs of the head and
+mark the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars
+only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous
+little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?
+
+These are reflections which must occur to every thoughtful person in the
+later and more meditative phases of a great war, when the eye has grown
+somewhat weary of the glitter of steel and the colour of banners, when
+the world mourns about us and the long lists of the dead and longer list
+of the stupendous waste sober the mind. Something is gravely wrong with
+our international life; and, plainly, it is not a question _whether_
+that international life departs from the Christian standard, but _why_,
+after fifteen hundred years of mighty Christian influence, it does so
+depart. Is the moral machinery of Europe ineffective? One certainly
+cannot say that it has not had a prolonged trial; yet here, in the
+twentieth century, we have, in the most terrible form, one of the most
+appalling evils which human agency ever brought upon human hearts. We
+have to reconsider our religious and ethical position; to ask ourselves
+whether, if the influence of religion has failed to direct men into
+paths of wisdom and peace, some other influence may not be found which
+will prove more persuasive and more beneficent.
+
+J. M.
+
+_Easter, 1915._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                              PAGE
+
+  I.  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES             1
+ II.  CHRISTIANITY AND WAR                          25
+III.  THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY                   48
+ IV.  THE WAR AND THEISM                            70
+  V.  THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE                         95
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES
+
+
+The first question which the unprejudiced inquirer will seek to answer
+is: How far were the Churches able to prevent, yet remiss in using their
+influence to prevent, the present war? There is, unhappily, in these
+matters no such thing as an entirely unprejudiced inquirer. Our
+preconceived ideas act like magnets on the material of evidence which is
+submitted to us, instinctively selecting what bears in their favour and
+declining to receive what they cannot utilise. Nowhere is this more
+conspicuous than in the field of religious inquiry, nor is it confined
+to either believers or unbelievers. There has been too much mutual
+abuse, and too little attention to the fact that the mind no less than
+the mouth has its palate, its impulsive selections and rejections. One
+can meet the difficulty only by a patient and full examination of the
+pleas of both parties to a controversy.
+
+And the first plea which it is material to examine is that, since it is
+claimed that all the nations engaged in the war are Christian nations,
+one may accuse them collectively of moral failure. From the earliest
+days of the Christian religion it was the boast of those who accepted
+it that it abolished all distinctions of caste and race. In the little
+community which gathered round the cross there was neither bond nor
+free, neither Greek nor Roman. This cosmopolitanism was, in fact, a
+natural feature of religious movements at the time, and was due not so
+much to their intrinsic development as to the political circumstances of
+the world in which they spread. All round the eastern and northern
+shores of the Mediterranean a great variety of races mingled in every
+port and every commercial town, and it was the policy of the powerful
+Empire which extended its sway over them all to overrule their national
+antagonisms. When, in the earlier period, Jew and Greek and Egyptian had
+maintained their separate nationalities, hostility to other races had
+been a very natural social quality, an inevitable part of the spirit of
+self-preservation in a race. When the great Empires had conquered the
+smaller nationalities or the decaying older Empires, this mutual
+hostility was moderated, and, as the vast movements of population which
+marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new era filled the
+Mediterranean cities with extraordinarily mixed crowds, mutual
+friendship became the more fitting and more useful social virtue. A good
+deal of the old narrow patriotism had been due to the fact that each
+nation had its own god. In the new Roman world this theological
+exclusivism broke down, and the priests of a particular god, scattered
+like their followers among the cities of the eastern world, began to
+seek a cosmopolitan rather than a nationalist following. In the temple
+of each of the leading gods of the time--Jahveh, Serapis, Mithra, and so
+on--people of all races and classes were received on a footing of
+equality. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man spread all over that
+cosmopolitan world.
+
+When the old world, to the south and east of the Mediterranean, was
+blotted out of history, and Europe in turn became a group of conflicting
+nationalities, racial hatred was revived and in its political and social
+aspects the doctrine of the brotherhood of man was virtually forgotten.
+But the Christian Church had embodied that doctrine in its sacred
+writing, and was bound to maintain it. In its ambition of a universal
+dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races
+of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world
+and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this
+change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of
+insincerity to the Christian gospel. In the older days there had been
+political unity with a great diversity of religions; now there was
+religious unity spread over a great diversity of antagonistic political
+bodies. Men were brothers from the religious point of view and, only too
+frequently, deadly enemies from the political point of view. The discord
+was made worse by the feudal system which was adopted. Even within the
+same race there was no brotherhood. In effect the clergy as a body did
+not insist that the noble was a brother of the serf, and did not exact
+fraternal treatment of the serf. Thus the phrase, "the brotherhood of
+man," which had been a most prominent and active principle of early
+Christianity, became little more than a useless theological thesis.
+
+The solution of the difficulty would, of course, have been for the
+clergy, as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood,
+to apply that doctrine boldly to every part of man's conduct; to
+pronounce that all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a
+humane means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the
+next chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great
+reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of
+modern times favoured a fresh assertion of the doctrine of brotherhood.
+Great as the power of sincere moral idealism has always been, the
+historian must recognise that economic changes have had a most important
+influence upon the development or acceptance of moral ideas. Just as in
+earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned by changes
+in their material surroundings, so man's moral development has been
+profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political changes.
+
+The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern worker
+were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
+important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
+asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers
+from the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them,
+and even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
+social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
+brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical
+facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in
+their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood,
+the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative
+that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the
+whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
+social and religious sense.
+
+This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
+political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong _prima
+facie_ case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
+It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
+socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
+with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
+on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
+relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
+criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
+revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
+mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
+that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
+_guilt_, but the _social effect_, which we regard. And from this point
+of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
+Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
+the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
+and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
+industry and commerce, no less a sum than L9,000,000,000; and it will
+certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
+besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
+relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will
+come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
+have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
+order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
+destructions of the entire social order of nations.
+
+It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection
+with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
+the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal
+conduct, they have no _raison d'etre_. Few of them to-day will plead
+that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they
+regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of
+our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such
+importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is
+abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what
+they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were
+slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.
+
+In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
+their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
+of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
+declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that
+they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however
+much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for
+years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half
+of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the
+greatest war in history. Now it is notorious that the Christian Churches
+have done little or nothing, in proportion to their mighty resources and
+influence, to avert this danger. No collective action has been taken,
+and relatively few individuals have used their influence to moderate or
+obviate the danger. The supreme head of the most powerfully organised
+and most cosmopolitan religious body in the world, an institution which
+has its thousands of ministers among each of the antagonistic peoples--I
+mean the Church of Rome--gave his attention to minute questions of
+doctrine and administration, and bemoaned repeatedly the evil spirit of
+our age, but issued not one single syllable of precise and useful
+direction to the various national regiments of his clergy in connection
+with this terrible impending danger. The heads or Councils of the
+various Protestant bodies were equally remiss. Here and there individual
+clergymen joined associations, founded by laymen, which endeavoured to
+maintain peace and to secure arbitration upon quarrels, and one Sunday
+in the year was set aside by the pulpits for the vague gospel of peace.
+But in almost all cases these movements were purely secular in origin,
+and the few movements of a religious nature have been obviously founded
+only to keep the idealism linked with a particular Church, have had no
+great influence, and have been too vague in their principles to have had
+any effect upon the growing chances of a European war. There is no doubt
+that the Churches have remained almost dumb while Europe was preparing
+for its Armageddon.
+
+I speak of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be
+confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a
+considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have
+even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of
+initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more
+leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian spirit, yet it
+would be absurd to restrict the criticism to them. The various Christian
+bodies, as a whole, have confronted a very grave and imminent danger
+with remarkable indifference, although that danger could become an
+actual infliction only by seriously immoral conduct on the part of some
+nation. They saw, as we all saw, the vast armies preparing for the fray,
+the diplomatists betraying an increasing concern about the relations
+between their respective nations, the press embittering those relations,
+and a pernicious and provocative literature inflaming public opinion. We
+all saw these things, and knew that a war of appalling magnitude would
+follow the first infringement of peace. Yet I think it will hardly be
+controverted that the Churches made no serious effort to avert that
+calamity from Europe. They were deeply concerned about unbelief, about
+personal purity, about the cleanness of plays and books and pictures,
+even about questions of social reform which a rebellious democracy
+forced on them; but they took no initiative and performed no important
+service in connection with this terrible danger.
+
+That is the indictment which many bring against Christianity, and we
+have now to consider the general defence. I will examine later a number
+of religious pronouncements about the war, and will discuss here only a
+few general pleas which are put forward as a defence against the general
+indictment.
+
+It is, in the first place, urged that the moral and humanitarian
+teaching which the Christian Churches never ceased to put before the
+world condemned in advance every departure from the paths of justice and
+charity; that it was not the fault of Christianity if men refused to
+listen to or carry into practice that teaching. But at no period in the
+history of morals has it sufficed to lay down general principles.
+Everybody perceives to-day, not only that slavery was in itself a crime,
+but that it was essentially opposed to the Christian morality. Yet, as
+no Christian teacher for many centuries ventured to apply the principle
+by expressly denouncing slavery, the institution was taken over from
+Paganism by Christian Europe and lasted centuries after the fall of the
+Roman Empire. The Church itself had vast numbers of slaves, and later of
+serfs, on its immense estates. Leo the Great disdainfully enacted that
+the priesthood must not be stained by admitting so "vile" a class to its
+ranks, and Gregory the Great had myriads of slaves on the Papal
+"patrimonies." So it was with the demand for social reform which
+characterised the nineteenth century. To-day Christians claim that their
+principles sanctioned and gave weight to those early demands of reform,
+yet their principles had been vainly repeated in Europe for fifteen
+hundred years, and, when the people themselves at last formulated their
+demands in the early part of the nineteenth century, it is notorious
+that the clergy opposed them. The teaching of abstract moral principles
+is of no avail. Man is essentially a casuist. Leave to him the
+application of your principles, and he will adapt almost any scheme of
+conduct to them. The moralist who does not boldly and explicitly point
+the application of his principles is either too ignorant of human nature
+to discharge his duty with effect or is a coward. The plain fact is that
+the preaching of justice and peace throughout Europe has been steadily
+accompanied by an increase in armaments and in international friction.
+It had no moral influence on the situation.
+
+A more valid plea is that we must distinguish carefully between the
+nations which inaugurated the war and the nations which are merely
+defending themselves, and we must quarrel with the Christian Churches
+only in those lands which are guilty. It may, indeed, be pleaded that,
+since each nation regards itself as acting on the defensive and uses
+arguments to this effect which convince its jurists and scholars no less
+than its divines, there is no occasion at all to introduce Christianity.
+Most of us do not merely admit the right, we emphasise the duty, of
+every citizen to take his share in the just defence of his country,
+either by arms or by material contribution. Since there seems to be a
+general conviction even in Germany and Austria that the nation is
+defending itself against jealous and designing neighbours, why quarrel
+with their clergy for supporting the war?
+
+When the plea is broadened to this extent we must emphatically reject
+it. There has been too much disposition among moralists to listen
+indulgently to such talk as this. When we find five nations engaged in a
+terrible war, and each declaring that it is only defending itself
+against its opponent, the cynic indeed may indolently smile at the
+situation, but the man of principle has a more rigorous task. Some one
+of those peoples is lying or is deceived, and, in the future interest of
+mankind, it is imperative to determine and condemn the delinquent. There
+is no such thing as an inevitable war, nor does the burden of great
+armaments lead of itself to the opening of hostilities. It is certain
+that on one side or the other, if not on both sides, there is a terrible
+guilt, and it is the duty of Christian or any other moralists, whether
+or no they belong to the guilty nations, sternly to assign and condemn
+that guilt. It is precisely on this loose and lenient habit of mind that
+the engineers of aggressive war build in our time, and we have seen, in
+the case of neutral nations and of a section of our own nation, what
+chances they have of succeeding. They have only to fill their people and
+the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely mendacious, and
+many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and
+declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a
+fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or
+more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or
+other, acquiesced in a crime.
+
+The plea is valid only to this extent, that the guilty nations in this
+case were notoriously Germany and Austria-Hungary, and therefore one
+cannot pass any censure on British Christians for supporting the war. I
+have in other works dealt so fully with the guilt of those two nations
+that here I must be content to assume it. The general and incessant cry
+of the German people, that they are only defending their Empire against
+malignant enemies, must be understood in the light of their recent
+history and literature. No Power in the world had given any indication
+of a wish to destroy Germany; there were, at the most, a few
+uninfluential appeals in England for an attack on Germany, but solely on
+the ground that it meditated an attack on England, and the accumulated
+evidence now shows that it did meditate such an attack. England did not
+desire an acre of German ground. France had assuredly not forgotten
+Alsace and Lorraine, but France would have had no support, and would
+have failed ignominiously, in an aggressive campaign to secure those
+provinces. On the other hand, an immense and weighty literature, which
+is unfortunately very little known in England, has familiarised Germany
+for fifteen years with aggressive ideas. The most authoritative writers
+claimed that, as they said repeatedly, "Germany must and will expand";
+and leagues which numbered millions of subscribers propagated this
+sentiment in every school and village. A definite demand was made
+throughout Germany for more colonies and a longer coast-line on the
+North Sea; and it was in relation to this ambition that England, France,
+and Russia were represented--and justly represented--as Germany's
+opponents. England, in particular, was described as the great dragon
+which watched at the gates of Germany and grimly forbade its
+"development." It is in this sense that the bulk of the German people
+maintain that their action is defensive.
+
+In passing, let me emphasise this peculiar economic difference between
+the four nations. Russia had a vast territory in which her people might
+develop. France had no surplus population, and had a large colonial
+field for such of her children as desired adventure abroad or would
+escape the competition at home. England had, in Canada and Australasia
+and South Africa, a magnificent estate for her surplus population. None
+of these Powers had an economic ground for aggression. Germany was
+undoubtedly in a far less fortunate position, and had an overflowing
+population. Six hundred thousand men and women (mostly men) had to leave
+the fatherland every year, and, as the colonies were small and
+unsatisfactory, they were scattered and lost among the nations of the
+earth. The proper attitude toward Germany is, not to gratify the cunning
+of her leaders by superficially admitting that she was not aggressive,
+but to understand clearly the very solid grounds of her desire for
+expansion.
+
+Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here.
+Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of
+the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that
+the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own
+industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such
+expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would
+suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war.
+Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were
+meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were
+utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not
+mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the
+other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or
+individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary
+principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were
+desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to
+assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany
+is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to
+defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for
+twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools;
+they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist
+propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive
+war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that,
+in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity
+should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext
+for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their
+passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and
+Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of
+justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass
+the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when, at
+the grave risk of a European war, Austria dishonestly annexed Bosnia and
+Herzegovina; they gave their tacit or open consent when Austria,
+refusing mediation, declared war on Serbia and inaugurated the titanic
+struggle; and they have passed no condemnation on the infamies which the
+Magyar troops perpetrated in Serbia.
+
+I am concerned mainly with the action or inaction of the Churches in
+this country, but it is entirely relevant to set out a brief statement
+of these facts about Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Christian religion
+was on trial in those countries as well as here. It failed so
+lamentably, not because there is more Christianity here than in Germany
+and Austria, not because the national character was inferior to the
+English and less apt to receive Christian teaching, but because the
+temptation was greater. Until this war occurred, no responsible
+traveller ever ventured to say that the German or Austrian character was
+inferior to the British. It is not. But the economic difficulties of
+Germany and the political difficulties (with the Slavs) of
+Austria-Hungary laid a heavier trial on those nations, and their
+Christianity entirely failed. Catholic and Protestant alike--for the two
+nations contain fifty million Catholics to sixty million
+Protestants--were swept onward in the tide of national passion, or
+feared to oppose it.
+
+One might have expected that at least the supreme head of the Roman
+Church would, from his detached throne in Rome, pass some grave censure
+on the outrages committed by Catholic Bavarians in Belgium or Catholic
+Magyars in Serbia. Not one syllable either on the responsibility for the
+war or the appalling outrages which have characterised it has come from
+him. The only event which drew from him a protest--a restrained and
+inoffensive remonstrance--was the confinement to his palace for some
+days of my old friend and teacher, Cardinal Mercier! To the stories of
+fearful and widespread outrage, even when they were sternly
+authenticated, he was deaf. One knows why. If Germany and Austria fail
+in this war, as they will fail, the Catholic bodies of Germany and
+Austria, the strongest Catholic political parties in Europe, will be
+broken. Millions of the Catholic subjects of Germany and Austria will
+pass under the rule of unbelieving France or schismatical Russia. So the
+supreme head of the Roman Church wraps himself nervously in a mantle of
+political neutrality and disclaims the duty of assigning moral guilt.
+
+On us in England was laid only the task of defending our homes and our
+honour. It is in those other countries that we most clearly see
+Christianity put to the test, and failing deplorably under the test. I
+do not mean that there was no opportunity here for the Churches to
+display their effectiveness as the moral guides of nations. In those
+fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly
+the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They
+did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the
+iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of
+their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I
+do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective
+armament, in England while the rest of the world remains armed. As long
+as we retain the military system instead of an international court, the
+soldier's profession is honourable, and the man who voluntarily faces
+the horrors of the field is entitled to respect and gratitude. But in
+every country there was an agitation for the _general_ abandonment of
+militarism and the substitution of lawyers for soldiers in the
+settlement of international quarrels. Had the Churches in every country
+given their whole support to this agitation, and insisted that it is
+morally criminal for the race as a whole to prolong the military system,
+we might not have witnessed this great catastrophe.
+
+Before, however, I press this charge against the Christian bodies, let
+me discuss the third plea that may be urged in defence of the Churches.
+It is the plea of those who are so eager to disclaim responsibility that
+they are willing to allow an enormous decay of religious influence in
+the modern world. You have repeatedly told us, they say to the
+Rationalist, that Christianity has lost its hold on Europe. You speak of
+millions who no longer hear the word of Christian ministers, but who
+_do_ read Rationalist literature in enormous quantities. Very well, you
+cannot have it both ways. Let us admit that the nations of Europe have
+become non-Christian, and we cast on your non-Christian influence the
+burden of responsibility for the war.
+
+This language has been used more than once in England. It leaves the
+speaker free to assume that in England, whose action in the war we do
+not criticise, the nation remains substantially Christian, while in
+Germany and Austria the Churches have lost more ground. Indeed, one may
+almost confine attention to Germany. Profoundly corrupt as political
+life has been in Austria-Hungary for years, there is no little evidence
+in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last
+moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria
+hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was
+Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its
+terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism
+and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in
+London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship.
+It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population
+attend church on Sundays. In other large towns of Germany the condition
+is, as in England, proportionate. Almost in proportion to the size of
+the town is the aversion of the people from the Churches.
+
+It is absolutely impossible in the case of Germany to determine, even in
+very round numbers, how many have abandoned their allegiance to
+Christianity, though, when one remembers the enormous rural population
+and the high proportion of believers in the smaller towns, it seems
+preposterous to suggest that the country has, even to the extent of one
+half, become non-Christian. But I am anxious to do justice to this plea,
+and would point out that it is the educated class and the men of the
+large cities who control a nation's policy. The rural population--the
+general population, in fact--follows its educated leaders. Now there is
+no doubt that in Germany, as elsewhere, this body of the population--the
+middle class and the workers of the great cities--has very largely lost
+the traditional belief. The workers of Berlin are solidly Socialistic,
+which means very largely anti-clerical. And I would boldly draw the
+conclusion that the responsibility for the war is shared at least
+equally by Christians and non-Christians. The stricture I have passed on
+the Churches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised
+bodies with a definite moral mission, were peculiarly bound to protest
+against the obvious political development of their country, and they
+entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the
+responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and
+Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have
+cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the
+first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real
+control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion--I
+should be disposed to say at least one half--are not Christians, or are
+Christians only in name.
+
+While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
+in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
+rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
+principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
+opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
+religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
+ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
+as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
+there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
+educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
+Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
+the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
+cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
+humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
+cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
+that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
+monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and
+Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald--all men of high moral
+idealism--gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
+this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents
+of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the
+Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to
+assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration,
+but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the
+influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in
+any degree facilitated the war.
+
+The Christian who regards all these non-Christian influences as "Pagan,"
+and feels that a "return to Paganism" explains the essential immorality
+of Germany's conduct, usually has a grossly inaccurate idea of Paganism.
+Whatever may be said of sexual developments in modern and ancient times,
+we shall see that the Roman writers held principles which most decidedly
+made for peace and brotherhood and justice. In point of fact, the
+majority of the German writers who have been responsible for the
+education of Germany in war-like ideas have been Christians. The Emperor
+himself, who is mainly responsible because of his deliberate
+prostitution of German schools to militarist purposes since 1891, will
+hardly be described as other than Christian; certainly every prelate or
+minister in Germany would vehemently resent such a description.
+Treitschke, who is probably the best known in England of the Imperialist
+writers, definitely bases his appalling conception of life on Christian
+principles, and claims that he is acting from a sense of the divine
+mission of Germany. General von Bernhardi uses precisely the same
+Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who,
+for more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive
+ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I
+should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a
+single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has
+contributed to their pernicious gospel.
+
+Probably the one German writer in the mind of those English people who
+speak of Germany's return to Paganism is Friedrich Nietzsche. It is true
+that Nietzsche was bitterly anti-Christian, and he has probably had a
+greater influence in Germany, in spite of his strictures on the country,
+than many seem disposed to allow. German booksellers have recently drawn
+up a statement in regard to the favourite books of soldiers in the
+field, and it appears that Nietzsche's _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ is
+second on the list--leagues ahead of the Bible. But to conclude from
+this that the anti-moral doctrine of the Pagan Nietzsche is the chief
+source of the outrages committed is one of those slipshod inferences
+which make one despair of Christian literature.
+
+In the first place, Goethe is even more popular with the troops than
+Nietzsche, and, although Goethe too was a Pagan, his teaching was the
+very antithesis of crime, violence, injustice, or hypocrisy. No nobler
+human doctrine was ever set forth than in the pages of his _Faust_, the
+first on this list of favourite books. In the second place, this fact at
+once warns us of a circumstance which we might have taken for granted:
+in the knapsacks of the overwhelming majority of the soldiers there are
+no books at all. It is the minority who read; and it is quite safe to
+assume that this thoughtful minority are not the minority who have
+disgraced German militarism. Thirdly--and it should hardly be necessary
+to make this observation--the sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would
+have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some
+ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he
+still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour
+out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially
+upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that
+Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he
+had only disdain, and it is folly to suppose that his aristocratic
+philosophy has been accepted among them as a gospel.
+
+Nietzsche has had a considerable influence on the more thoughtful
+reading public in Germany, yet even here one has to make reserves in
+charging him with a part in the preparation of the country for an
+aggressive war. His peculiar art and temperamental exaggerations make it
+impossible for any but a patient few to grasp his teaching accurately,
+and are peculiarly liable to mislead the less patient. When, therefore,
+he stresses--as most anti-Socialists do--the Darwinian struggle for
+existence, when he assails the humanitarian and Christian doctrine of
+helping the weak, when he calls into question the received code of
+morals, and when he extols self-assertion and strength of will, his
+fiery words do lend some confirmation, which he assuredly never
+intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much
+averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching,
+which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt
+for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We
+must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to
+the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von
+Bernhardi's admiring references to his philosophy sufficiently show
+this.
+
+But Nietzsche's very limited influence on German thought cannot
+reasonably be quoted as justification of the common saying that Germany
+had deserted Christianity for Paganism. Had such a statement been made
+before the war began, our divines would have indignantly repudiated it.
+The truth is that all classes--Christian and non-Christian--have yielded
+fatally to the pernicious interpretation which interested politicians,
+soldiers, manufacturers, and Jingoistic writers have put on the real
+economic needs of the country. Of the Socialist and Catholic parties, in
+particular, the two most powerfully organised bodies in Germany, we may
+say that, in deserting their ideals, they have been partly deceived into
+a real belief that Russia and England sought their destruction, and they
+have partly yielded to that very old and familiar temptation--the desire
+to retain their numerical strength by compromising with their
+principles. In justice to the Socialists it should be added that that
+party has furnished the only men and journals in Germany to raise any
+protest against the madness of the nation. One of the most repulsive
+moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most
+liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the
+people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has
+transpired time after time that the _Vorwaerts_ has protested against
+this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or
+religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially
+sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no
+Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is
+reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the
+official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian
+protest, from end to end of the campaign.
+
+Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and
+non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real
+difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of
+the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity
+be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for
+this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the
+natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages
+ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official
+teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice
+of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries
+ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to
+assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric
+patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard
+the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral
+development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of
+nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is
+surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like
+Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by
+our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his
+opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in
+this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more
+deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of
+tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood,
+of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole
+kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race.
+War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of
+civilisation.
+
+The question of real interest is, therefore, the historical question.
+Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very
+penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours
+did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the
+participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain
+of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally persuading
+themselves that the action of their country is just and necessary. But
+from the day when we awoke to an adult perception of the life of the
+world we have been aware that the established system of settling
+international quarrels was barbaric and might in any year lead to just
+such a catastrophe. How comes it that such a system has survived fifteen
+hundred years of profound Christian influence? Whatever we may think of
+the clergy of to-day, with the more powerful clergy of yesterday we have
+a grave reckoning. The Rationalist is a new thing in Europe. The very
+name is little more than a century old, and until a few decades ago only
+a few thousand would accept it. Not from such a new and struggling
+movement do we ask why this military system has dominated Europe for
+ages and has only in recent times been seriously challenged. During
+those ages the Churches suffered none but themselves to pretend to a
+moral influence over the life of the nations, nor were there many bold
+and independent enough to make the claim. It is of the Churches we ask
+why this appalling system has taken such deep root in the life of Europe
+that it resists the most devoted efforts to eradicate it. It is not
+_this_ war, but war, that accuses the Churches. We are entangled in a
+system so widespread and so subtle that, when a war occurs, each nation
+can persuade itself that it is acting on just grounds. It is the system
+which interests us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
+
+
+The day will come when the student of human development will find war
+one of the most remarkable institutions that ever entered and quitted
+history. Civilisation took it over from barbarism; barbarism from the
+savage; the savage from the beast. So we are accustomed to argue, but we
+must make a singular reservation. The lowest peoples of the human
+family, which seem to represent primitive man, do not wage war, and are
+little addicted to violence. They seem by some process of natural
+selection to have obtained the social quality of peacefulness and mutual
+aid. There was, in a sense, a stage of primitive innocence. As, however,
+these primitive peoples grew in numbers and were organised in tribes, as
+they obtained collective possessions--flocks and pastures and hunting
+grounds--they came into collision with each other, and all the old
+pugnacity of the beast awoke. Skill, and even ferocity, in war became a
+valuable social quality, and we get the stage of the savage. The
+barbarian, or the man between savagery and civilisation, was still
+compelled to fight for his possessions. He was usually surrounded by
+fierce savage tribes. The civilised man in turn was surrounded by
+savages and barbarians, and needed to fight. So through thousands of
+years of development of moral sentiment and legal procedure the
+primitive method of the beast has been preserved.
+
+But I am not writing a history of warfare, and need not describe these
+stages more closely, or examine the new sentiment of imperialist
+expansion which gave civilisations a fresh incentive to develop methods
+of warfare. The point of interest is to determine at what stage it might
+have been possible for the moral element to intervene and bid the
+warriors, in the name of humanity, lay down their arms; at what stage
+the tribunal which men had set up to adjudicate between the quarrels of
+individuals might have been enlarged so as to be capable of arbitrating
+on the quarrels of nations.
+
+Now this was plainly impossible in the early centuries of the present
+era, and it is therefore foolish to ask why Pagan moralists did not do
+what we expect Christian moralists to have done. I have already
+mentioned, and have fully described elsewhere, how humanitarian
+sentiments were generally diffused throughout the old Graeco-Roman world.
+There is not a phrase of the New Testament which has not a parallel
+among the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The great
+fusion of peoples in the Roman Empire begot a feeling of brotherhood,
+and, by a natural reaction on years of vice and violence, there was a
+considerable growth of lofty and tender, and often impracticable,
+sentiments. Moralists urged men to avoid anger, to bear blows with
+dignity, to greet all men as brothers, even to love their enemies. Plato
+and Epictetus and Plutarch and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius urged these
+maxims as forcibly as Christ did. The Stoic religion or philosophy,
+which guided Emperors and lawyers, and had a very wide influence in the
+Roman world, was intensely and quite modernly humanitarian. Its
+principal exponents condemned slavery and promoted a remarkable spread
+of philanthropy.
+
+It was, however, not possible for the Stoics to condemn war. Some of the
+more ardent and less practical humanitarians of the time did this, but
+no alert Roman citizen could advocate the abolition of the legions. The
+Empire was completely surrounded by barbarians who would rush in and
+trample on its civilisation the moment the fence of spears was removed.
+From the turreted walls in the north of England, where men watched the
+Picts and Scots, to the deserts of Mesopotamia--from the banks of the
+Danube and Rhine to the spurs of the Atlas--it was essential to maintain
+those bronzed legions who guarded the civilised provinces from
+marauders. With those outlying barbarians no treaty was possible or
+sacred; no legal tribunal would have protected those frontiers from the
+men who looked covetously on the fertile fields and comfortable cities
+of the Roman provinces. From the first to the fourth century Rome
+fought, not for its expansion, but for its preservation against these
+increasing enemies; and it was the final intensification of the pressure
+in the Danube region by the arrival of enormous hordes of barbarians
+from Asia which precipitated the final catastrophe. Paganism had never
+the slightest opportunity to abandon the military system, and only those
+who are totally unacquainted with Roman history can wonder why it did
+not make the attempt. It would have been a crime to abandon the
+civilised provinces to barbarism.
+
+This was the essential position of the Roman Empire: the civil wars of
+the fourth century, by which its military system was abused, need not
+be considered here. And the student of history must recognise with
+equal candour that the new Christianity, which succeeded Paganism in the
+fourth and fifth centuries, was equally powerless to abolish warfare.
+What we may justly blame is that the triumphant Christianity of the
+fourth century did not merely sanction the use of arms in defence of
+civilisation; it employed them in its own interest. The earlier
+Christians had exasperated the Romans by refusing to bear arms in the
+service of the Empire, plain as the need was. To a slight extent this
+was due to an aversion from the shedding of blood; for the most part
+military service was refused because it was saturated with Pagan rites.
+When the Empire became Christian, this objection was removed, and the
+Christians freely entered the army. Unhappily, the Christian body
+deteriorated with the new prosperity and base instincts were indulged.
+It is an undoubted historical fact, recorded by St. Jerome himself, that
+the election of Pope Damasus, his friend and benefactor, was accompanied
+by bloody and fatal riots. From undoubted historical sources we know
+that the Christian mob compelled the Prefect of Rome to fly from the
+city, and there is very serious evidence (in a document written by two
+Roman priests) that Damasus employed the swords and staves of his
+supporters to secure his position. Damasus and subsequent Popes then
+obtained or sanctioned the use of the Roman soldiers for the suppression
+of heresy and schism and Paganism, and Christianity was installed by
+violence throughout the Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire things were
+even worse. Violence became the customary device in the seething
+religious quarrels of the time, and, literally, tens of thousands lost
+their lives. The Byzantine or Greek Christianity entered upon a record
+of crime and violence which disgraced it for many centuries.
+
+This development did not augur well for the application of Christian
+principles to warfare. We may, however, observe at once that for many
+centuries the Roman Church had not the slightest chance of establishing
+peace in Europe. The destruction of the Roman Empire and disbanding of
+its armies made an entirely new situation in Italy. The Popes were, for
+the most part, good men, but they did not dream at that time of
+controlling the counsels of kings and dictating affairs of State. Even
+the story of Pope Leo the Great overawing the King of the Huns, Attila,
+and turning his army away from Italy, is a mere legend of medieval
+writers, and is at variance with the nearer authorities. The northern
+tribes themselves were to a great extent, and for some centuries, of the
+Arian faith, and took no advice from Rome. In a word, it would be stupid
+to expect Christian leaders of the early Middle Ages to press the cause
+of peace. The northern peoples, who would in time form the nations of
+Europe, were essentially violent and warlike, and would have recognised
+no pacific counsels in that imperfect stage of their religious
+development.
+
+Where the historian may and must censure the Church is in its adoption
+of militarism for its own purposes. Pope Gregory the Great found Italy
+in a chaotic and pitiful condition, and no doubt he acted, on the whole,
+rightly in organising its military defence. The more serious
+circumstance was that he began to receive immense estates, as gifts or
+legacies, in all parts of Italy as the property of the Roman Church, and
+from that time either a Papal army or the employment of the army of
+some friendly monarch was necessary in order to protect these estates.
+With the confirmation and consolidation of these estates into a kingdom
+under Charlemagne in the ninth century the Papacy completed its moral
+aberration. Most of the Popes were still men of good character, and they
+no doubt persuaded themselves that, since the income of these estates
+was needed for the fulfilment of their spiritual task, it was proper to
+defend them by the sword. But casuistry of this kind has never prospered
+indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal
+development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which
+rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence on Europe. The Papacy
+became a princedom to attract the covetous and the ambitious, and the
+line of Popes sank so low by the tenth century that the grossest
+characters were able to occupy the chair of Peter at a time when the
+nations of Europe were sufficiently advanced to be susceptible of a
+sincere moral influence. The record of the Papacy, from the ninth
+century to the nineteenth, contains on almost every page a bloody
+struggle for the temporal power. The most religious and most eminent of
+the Popes, such as Gregory VII and Innocent III, were the most prompt to
+set in motion the machinery of war in defence of their territories or in
+punishment of rebels against their authority. Not one of them was in a
+position to bid kings disband their armies, or ever dreamed of enjoining
+them to do more than observe a few days' truce or keep their swords from
+each other in order to save them for the common enemy of Christendom.
+
+It would be useless to speculate about the date when the new nations of
+Europe had become sufficiently civilised to hear a gospel of peace. The
+idea of superseding the military system of Europe by a juridical system
+occurred to no Christian leader, and therefore we need not consider what
+prospect it might have had of realisation. The Christian gospel of
+meekness had become a mockery: even the great abbeys, in which the
+gentler and more religious were supposed to be immured, had their
+troops, and abbots and bishops, and very often Papal Legates, appeared
+at the head of armies. Two Popes, John X and Julius II, marched
+themselves at the head of their troops. Cardinals had their suites of
+swordsmen, and the castles of the Roman aristocracy were at times strong
+fortifications from which war of the most ferocious and unscrupulous
+character was waged. Christendom was steeped in violence; only a gentle
+saint or bishop here and there caught a futile vision of a world of
+peace. Every man was armed against possible trouble with his neighbour;
+every noble had his retainers and kept them well exercised; every prince
+was free, as far as the spiritual authorities were concerned, to covet
+and bloodily exact the lands of his neighbour. The noble, of either sex,
+found supreme delight in jousts which the modern sentiment finds as
+inhuman as a sordid quarrel of _Apaches_ over a mistress; the peasants
+found a corresponding pleasure in the play of quarter-staves or the
+combats of dogs and cocks.
+
+It is, as I said, little use to speculate about the chances of a gospel
+of humanity in such a world. The overwhelming majority of priests and
+prelates made no effort whatever to restrain the prevailing violence.
+The elementary duty of any profound moral agency was to protest without
+ceasing, even if the protest was unavailing. It is not at all clear that
+it would have been unavailing. The power of the Popes was beyond that
+of any other hierarchy known to history, and at least the moral
+education of Europe would have proceeded less slowly, and war would have
+been abolished centuries ago, if there had been any serious, collective,
+and authoritative enforcement of Christian principles. There was not,
+and to this silence of the clergy during those long ages of their power
+we owe the maintenance in Europe to-day of the regime of violence. They
+were so far from enjoying moral inspiration in this respect that they
+were amongst the first to bless the banners and swell the coffers of an
+aggressive monarch, and they gave the military system a final
+consecration by employing it repeatedly in the interests of the Church.
+
+All that one can plead in mitigation of this deep historical censure of
+the medieval Church is that the frontiers of Christendom were for
+centuries threatened by the Turk and the Saracen. The old need of
+protecting civilisation by arms had almost disappeared. Few and feeble
+peoples remained outside the range of Christian civilisation after the
+tenth century. Armies were maintained only in the interest of criminal
+ambition or for the settlement of disputes which ought to have been
+submitted to judges. The menace of the Turk, with his hostile religion,
+was, of course, a just ground for armaments, but a few nations generally
+bore the whole brunt of his onset. Whatever religious feeling may make
+of the great Crusades, which drew to the east armies from all parts of
+Europe, secular history must dismiss them as appalling blunders. The few
+advantages they brought to European culture cannot seriously be weighed
+against the terrible sacrifice of lives and the even more terrible
+consecration of militarism. In a word, the menace of the Turk could
+have been met admirably by such an arrangement as we are advocating in
+Europe to-day: the maintenance of a small force by each nation for
+common action, under the direction of a supreme legal tribunal, against
+nations which would not obey the common law of peace. But we need not
+seriously discuss the influence of the Turk on the system. The last
+phases of the struggle, when the selfish nations and the ambitious
+Papacy spent their time in idle mutual recrimination and left the
+Hungarians and Poles to do all the work, justify us in dismissing that
+element. Kings and republics maintained armies for purely selfish
+purposes, for brutal aggression and defence against aggressors; and not
+a prelate in Europe had any moral repugnance to the system, or ventured
+to condemn it, especially as the Church used the same agency in defence
+of its own temporal interests.
+
+With the development of the Papal power and the advance of the peoples
+of Europe the opportunity of peace became greater, but the spiritual
+authority pledged itself more and more deeply to the military system.
+The Popes aspired--as Gregory VII and Innocent III repeatedly state--to
+control the temporal as well as the spiritual affairs of Europe, to
+transfer crowns when they thought fit, to direct invasions and military
+expeditions against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand
+boasts (_Ep._ vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask
+Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the
+Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its
+sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to
+bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal
+throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief
+for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two
+greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they
+carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement
+of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most
+militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set
+armies--even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe--in motion
+to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of
+deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions of
+neighbouring kings.
+
+The rise of heresy and of protests against the corruption of the Papacy
+was another very grave pretext of the Church to support the military
+system. In the days of Gregory VII a body of Puritans known as the
+Patareni spread over the north of Italy, and Rome encouraged a few
+soldiers to lead armed mobs against them and drown their idealism in
+blood. Innocent III has a more terrible stigma on his record. The
+Albigensians, an early type of Protestants, were spreading in the south
+of France, and the Pope sanctioned a "crusade"--an expedition, largely,
+of looters and cut-throats--against them from all parts of France. The
+appalling deceit practised by the Papal Legate and sanctioned by the
+Pope, the ferocity of the campaign, and the desolation brought on one of
+the happiest and most prosperous provinces of France, may be read in any
+history of the thirteenth century. Tens of thousands of men, women, and
+children were savagely put to death. And this was only the beginning of
+the Papal war on heresy, which from the thirteenth century never ceased
+to spring up in Europe until it won its right of citizenship in the
+Reformation. Even more vehemently was war urged against the Moors, then
+the most civilised people in Europe.
+
+In face of this notorious history of Europe during the long course of
+the Middle Ages it is now usual for Catholic apologists to plead that
+the blood of the barbarian still flowed in the veins of the Christian
+nations and men were not yet prepared to listen to the message of peace.
+This plea cannot for a moment be admitted in extenuation of the Church's
+guilt. The clergy had themselves no conception of the criminality of
+war, and did not rise above the moral level of their age. Here and there
+a saint or a prelate raised a feeble voice against the violence of men,
+but we do not estimate an institution by the words of an occasional
+member, especially if they are at variance with the official conduct and
+the general sentiment. On the other hand, to boast that the clergy at
+times enforced a temporary cessation of fighting (the "Truce of God")
+only increases our appreciation of their guilt. The men who enforced
+that Truce gave proof at once of their power and of their perception of
+the un-Christian nature of warfare. But they were unwilling to condemn
+outright a machinery which they might employ at any moment in defence or
+advancement of their own interests. Had the Church been a serious moral
+influence in Europe, had it been true to the message in virtue of which
+it had grown rich and powerful, it would have protested unceasingly
+against this reign of violence. It was not a great moral influence. The
+grossness and illiteracy of the people, the appalling immorality of the
+clergy and monks and nuns, and this almost entire failure to apply
+Christian or ordinary human principles to the worst feature of the life
+of Europe, are terrible offsets to the little good it achieved. Europe
+was steadily educated and encouraged, century after century, in the
+shedding of blood.
+
+The Protestant is at times disposed to dismiss the whole sordid story
+with the remark that this Roman Church was not Christianity at all. He
+contrives to overlook the serious difficulty that, if the Roman Church
+did not represent Christianity from the sixth century to the sixteenth,
+there was, contrary to the promise of Christ, no Christianity in Europe
+for a thousand years; and he surrenders all the wonderful art of the
+Middle Ages (as he ought) to entirely non-Christian forces. That,
+however, does not concern me here. The slightest recollection of history
+would warn the Protestant that the Reformation brought no improvement
+whatever, as far as this reign of violence is concerned. The forces set
+up by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation fought each other for
+some decades with the comparatively peaceful weapons of mutual abuse and
+heated argument. When it was perceived that these weapons were of no
+avail, there was the customary appeal to the sword. In the historical
+documents which tell the life of Pope Paul IV we see the Papacy and the
+Jesuits urging the Catholic princes to lead out their armies. Heresy was
+to be extinguished in blood; and, seeing how many millions in the north
+had by that time embraced the heresy, there can have been no illusion as
+to the magnitude of the oceans of blood that would be required to drown
+it. So Europe entered upon the horrors of the Thirty Years' War
+(1618-1648), which put back the civilisation of Germany for more than a
+hundred years and utterly ruined some of the small principalities. The
+population of Bohemia alone fell from three millions to less than a
+million. Nearly every nation in Europe was involved, and the war was
+conducted with all the brutality of the older medieval warfare.
+
+The fact that political as well as religious ambitions were engaged in
+the Thirty Years' War does not affect my argument. In so far as
+religious sentiment was responsible--and it will hardly be questioned
+that it had a large share in the Thirty Years' War--we find a fresh
+consecration by Christianity itself of the use of the sword. But the
+main point we have to consider is that the new spiritual authorities
+were no more inclined than the old to declare that warfare was opposed
+to Christian principles. The last three centuries have been as full of
+aggressive war as the three centuries which preceded, but there was no
+protest by Christian ministers either in Protestant England and
+Scandinavia or in Catholic France and Austria. It was the period when
+the modern Powers of Europe were building up their vast dominions, and
+no one who is acquainted with the story can have any illusion as to the
+application to that process of what are now described as clear Christian
+principles.
+
+This is precisely the plaint of modern Germany. We seek, they say, to do
+merely what England and France--it were indiscreet to mention
+Austria--did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were
+vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their
+civilisation over backward lands. They appealed solely to the right of
+the sword, and all the Christian authorities in Europe--the bishops of
+William and of Anne, the bishops of Louis XIV, the bishops of Peter the
+Great--had not a single syllable to say against the right of the sword.
+The various branches of the Christian Church were at that time
+singularly unanimous in accommodating their principles to imperialist
+and aggressive warfare. Now that you have obtained all that you
+need--the aggrieved Teuton says--now that I in turn would expand and
+colonise, you discover that this imperialist aggression is supremely
+opposed to Christian principles.
+
+On some such meditations, in part, the German bases his conviction of
+the hypocrisy and perfidy of the English character. He is, of course,
+entirely wrong. A real change has taken place in the moral sentiment of
+this country; a change so real that when, in South Africa, the nation
+entered upon a war which many regarded as aggressive and merely
+acquisitive, there was a very widespread revolt. The cynic might
+genially observe that it is not difficult to retire from evil-doing and
+cultivate lofty principles when your fortune has been made, but it is
+important to realise this change and understand its significance. There
+is, no doubt, a sound human element in the cynic's observation. It _is_
+easier to recognise moral principle when the period of temptation is
+over. Every thoughtful and humane Englishman will make allowance for the
+less fortunate position of Germany, and not foolishly pride himself on
+his own superiority of character. The fact remains, however, that there
+has been a real moral improvement in England and France, and it would
+now be impossible for those nations to enter upon the aggressive and
+nakedly ambitious wars which they were accustomed to undertake before
+the nineteenth century. We have a genuine abhorrence of the "lust for
+land" which has impelled Germany to plunge Europe into war. But until a
+century or two ago that lust for land was considered a legitimate
+appetite in Europe, and the clergy crowded with the people to greet the
+warriors who came home with the news that they had added, by the sword,
+one more province to our spreading Empire.
+
+That this change of heart is not merely a feeling that we have no
+further need of aggression, and would ourselves suffer by the aggression
+of others, could easily be proved, if it were necessary. In the same
+period of change we abolished the duel, and there was no material
+advantage in discovering the immorality of the duel. We abolished
+dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and other brutalising
+spectacles. We undertook a reform of our industrial and penal systems
+which, however imperfect it be, was very considerable in itself, and was
+inspired solely by motives of humanity. There was a general and marked
+improvement of public sentiment, and it is as part of this improvement
+that we now find a universal condemnation of aggressive war and a
+widespread demand for the entire abolition of war. The construction of
+English history and English character on the lines of Mr. G. B. Shaw may
+be entertaining, and may save considerable trouble of research, but it
+does not conduce to sound judgment. The laments of social pessimists and
+of certain religious controversialists are never supported by accurate
+knowledge. Every social historian who gives evidence of knowing the
+evils of the England of a century ago as well as the England of to-day
+admits that there has been a great moral advance.
+
+I will examine in the next chapter certain comments of religious writers
+and speakers on this advance. Here I wish to determine the facts with
+some clearness. It has not been necessary for me to discuss the medieval
+and the early modern period with any fullness. There is no dispute about
+the features of those periods. They were ages of violence, of incessant
+and frankly aggressive war, of unrestrained ambition. The smallest
+pretext sufficed for a monarch, if his forces and finances were in
+order, to invade his neighbour's territory and annex as much of it as
+he could hold by the sword. Frederic the Great and Napoleon did not
+introduce new ideas into Europe; they attempted to revive medieval ideas
+in a changing world. Austria in its annexation of Bosnia and
+Herzegovina, Germany in its ambition to annex Belgium and the colonies
+which other Powers have laboriously cultivated, are following their
+example. They are not inventing new forms of criminality; they are not
+returning to Pagan ideals: they are reverting merely to ideals which
+were accepted throughout Europe for more than a thousand years. In the
+more brutal features of war to which they have descended they are even
+more emphatically reverting to the Middle Ages. The Romans did not
+commit such outrages at the command of educated officers. Medieval
+Christians did: the record of Papal warfare, down to the "Massacre of
+Perugia" in 1859, is as deeply stained as any by these abominable
+methods.
+
+My further point, that the Christian Church or Churches made no serious
+resistance to the prevailing brutality, is just as easy to establish. It
+is a sheer travesty of argument to put forward the gentle exhortations
+of a Francis of Assisi as characteristic of the Christian Church when
+the Pope of the time, one of the most powerful and conscientious Popes
+of all time, Innocent III, was threatening or directing the movements of
+ferocious armies all over Europe. Most assuredly there were among the
+numbers of fine characters who appeared in Christendom in the course of
+a thousand years many who deeply resented the prevailing violence. But
+when we speak of the Church, we speak of its official action and its
+predominant sentiment. The official action of the Popes was, during all
+that period, to make the same use as any terrestrial monarch of the
+service of soldiers; they failed, from Gregory the Great to Pius X, to
+recognise one of the supreme moral needs of Europe. The bishops of the
+Church of England and the heads of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches
+did not prove to have any sounder moral inspiration in this respect. It
+was left to despised bodies like the Friends, who were hardly recognised
+as Christians, and to rare individuals to protest against the system
+which has brought such appalling evil on Europe.
+
+In the nineteenth century the moral sentiment of Europe began to advance
+more rapidly than it had previously done, and the idea of substituting
+arbitration for war began to spread. The history of this reform has not
+yet been written, as far as I can discover, but it is hardly likely that
+any will be bold enough to suggest that the idea was due to
+Christianity. After the Napoleonic wars, at least, Europe was ripe for
+such a reform. I do not mean that public feeling in Europe was prepared
+for the idea. It would have met with a very considerable degree of
+resistance, and would have generally been conceived as the dream of an
+amiable fanatic. Such resistance makes the duty of the moralist or the
+reformer all the more pressing, and it is merely amazing to hear the
+earlier Christian clergy exonerated on the ground that the world was not
+prepared to receive a message of peace from them. They did not try the
+experiment because it did not occur to them, or because they were too
+closely dependent on the monarchs of the earth to question the wisdom of
+their arrangements. Europe was, in point of fact, quite ripe for the
+change in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and there would
+assuredly be no war to-day if the Churches had had the moral inspiration
+and the moral courage to insist on it. The frontiers of the nations were
+(except in the case of Italy and Poland) defined with a fair show of
+justice, and the time had come to disband armies and submit any future
+quarrel to arbitration: to retain only a small standing army in each
+country for the defence of its colonial frontiers against tribes which
+do not respect arbitration, or for the enforcement of the decisions of
+the central tribunal. The conditions were almost as favourable for such
+a change in 1816 as they are to-day, or will be in 1916, and it is
+another grave point in the indictment of Christianity that it had no
+inspiration to demand that change. The bishops of England no less than
+the bishops of Rome were deeply concerned about the rise of democracy
+and the spread of unbelief, and they joined with the monarchs in
+enforcing a system of violent repression. For the larger and more real
+need of Europe they had no feeling whatever, and militarism entered upon
+its last and most terrible phase: the stage of national armies and of
+means of destruction prepared with all the fearful skill of modern
+science.
+
+As the nineteenth century proceeded, humanitarianism attained clearer
+conceptions and more articulate speech. The scheme of substituting legal
+procedure for military violence was definitely put before the world. It
+is not necessary, and would be difficult, to trace the earliest
+developments of this idea. On the one hand, I find no claim that it was
+put forward by representatives of Christianity; on the other hand,
+literary research among the records of the early Rationalist movements
+in this country has shown me that the idea was familiar and welcome
+amongst them. No doubt the aversion of the Friends from bloodshed had
+some influence, and we find representatives of that noble-minded Society
+active in more than one of the early reform-movements. But, as far as I
+can discover, it was Robert Owen who first definitely advanced the idea
+of substituting arbitration for war, and it was repeatedly discussed
+among the "Rational Religion" Societies--which were not at all
+religious--that he founded or inspired in various parts of the country.
+The immense influence which he obtained in the thirties and forties
+enabled him to direct public attention to the reform.
+
+This early history is, however, as yet vague and unstudied, nor do we
+need to enter into any ungenerous struggle about priority. It is enough
+that the idealist scheme was well known in England long before the
+middle of the nineteenth century. Did the Christian Churches adopt and
+enforce it? Here, at least, no minute research is needed. The Christian
+bodies failed lamentably and totally (apart from the heterodox Friends)
+even to recognise the moral and humane greatness of the idea when it was
+definitely presented to them. It is only in the last few years that a
+Peace Sunday has--at the suggestion of lay associations--been adopted in
+the churches and chapels of England. It is only in quite recent times
+that bishops and ministers have stood on peace-platforms and advocated
+the reform. And even to-day, when peace associations founded by laymen
+have been endeavouring for decades to educate the country, no branch of
+the Christian Church has officially and collectively decreed that
+Christian principles enjoin the reform; no Pope or Archbishop or Church
+Council has supported it with a stern and official injunction that
+Christian and moral principle demands that all the members of the
+particular Church shall subscribe to and work for the reform. Even at
+this eleventh hour, when the issue of peace or war confronts the whole
+of mankind, one notices hesitation, reserve, ambiguity. During the
+fateful years between 1900 and 1914, when the nations were, in the eyes
+of all, preparing the most appalling armaments ever known in history,
+when men were speaking freely all over Europe of "the next war" and the
+terrific dimensions which modern science and modern alliances would give
+to it, the various branches of the Christian Church adhered to their
+ancient and futile practice of preaching general principles (as far as
+national conduct is concerned), and had little practical influence on
+the development.
+
+I am not unaware of the small movements among the clergy for cultivating
+international clerical friendship, or of the extent to which individual
+clergymen have co-operated in the various arbitration movements. That is
+only a feeble discharge of a small part of their duty. Had Leo XIII or
+Pius X issued a plain and explicit Encyclical on the subject, and
+directed his vast international organisation of clergy to labour
+wholeheartedly for its realisation, who can estimate what the result
+would have been? Had the clergy of Germany issued a stern and collective
+denunciation of the Pan-German and Imperialist literature which was
+instilling poison into every village of the country, can we suppose that
+it would have been without avail? Had the Archbishops and Bishops of
+England, and the leaders of the Free Churches, definitely instructed
+their people that the pacifist ideal was not merely in accord with
+Christian principles, but was one of the most urgent and beneficent
+reforms of our time, would the English people have passed as
+inobservantly as it did through the five years of preparation for a
+great war?
+
+It is no part of my plan to analyse this deplorable failure of the
+Churches as moral agencies. The explanation would be complex, and is now
+superfluous. The clergy were, like the majority of their fellows,
+obsessed by the military system and unable to realise the possibility of
+a change. In part they were deluded by the catch-words of superficial
+literature. They had an idea that we were asking England to lower its
+armament while the rest of the world increased its armament. They
+muttered that "the time was not ripe," not realising that it was their
+business to make it ripe. They had been accustomed for ages to preaching
+a purely individualist morality, and they felt ill at ease in the larger
+social applications of moral principle which our age regards as more
+important. They feared to offend military supporters, and did not
+realise that one may entirely honour the soldier as long as the military
+system lasts, yet resent the system. They felt that this new movement
+was suspiciously hailed by Socialists, and that to denounce armies had
+an air of politics about it. They were peculiarly wedded to tradition,
+on account of the very nature they claimed for their traditions, and
+they instinctively felt that to denounce war would be to attempt to
+improve, not merely on their predecessors, but on the Old and the New
+Testaments. They solaced themselves with the thought that unnecessary
+violence was condemned in their general teaching, and that, if it
+eventually transpired that war was unnecessary, they could point out
+once more the all-embracing character of the Christian ethic. In fine,
+they were for the greater part, like the greater part of their fellows,
+mentally indolent and indisposed to think out or fight for a new idea.
+
+Whatever the explanation, the fact remains. By the tenth century
+Christianity was fully organised, and all the peoples of Europe were
+Christian; by the thirteenth century the power of the Church was
+enormous and the nations of Europe were settled and civilised. But
+neither then nor at any later period did Christianity perceive the crime
+and stupidity of the prevailing system. The perception is even now only
+faint and partial. It is this long toleration of the military system,
+the thousand-year silence on what is now acclaimed as one of the
+greatest applications of Christian principle, that one finds it
+difficult or impossible to forgive. The zeal of some of the modern
+clergy is open to a certain not unnatural suspicion: in view of their
+shrinking authority and the growing indifference of the world to dogma
+and ritual, they have been forced to take up these new and larger ideas
+of our time.
+
+Even if one lays aside that suspicion, and in many cases it is quite
+unjust, the clergy must realise that the indictment of Christianity is
+grave, and is almost unatonable. Those thousand years of conflict,
+during which they sanctioned every variety of war and initiated many
+wars in their own interest, have given the military system such root in
+the hearts of men that it will require a supreme and prolonged effort to
+destroy it. The proverbial visitor from Mars would not be so much amazed
+at any feature of our life as at this retention amid a great
+civilisation of the barbaric method of settling international
+differences. He would ask in astonishment how an intelligent and
+generally humane race, a race which raises homes for stray cats and aged
+horses, could cling to a system which, on infallible experience, plunges
+one or more countries in the deepest suffering every few years. He would
+learn that there has not been a war in Europe for a hundred years the
+initial cause of which would not have been better appreciated and
+adjudicated on by a body of impartial lawyers; and that, if the quarrels
+had thus been submitted to arbitration, we should have saved (including
+the annual military expenditure and the cost of the present war) some
+three million lives and more than L15,000,000,000--since the end of the
+Napoleonic wars. In answer to the amazement of this imaginary critic, we
+could reply only that Europe has grown to regard the military system as
+so permanent and unquestioned an institution of our civilisation that it
+simply cannot imagine the abolition of that system.
+
+For this incapacity, this widespread inertia, this blundering idea that
+there is some serious intrinsic difficulty in the matter, the Churches
+are responsible. If they had directed to war the smallest particle of
+the ardent rhetoric they have poured on disbelief in dogmas which they
+are to-day abandoning, the public mind would have awakened long ago.
+There is no intrinsic difficulty in substituting arbitration for war.
+There are technical difficulties which the great lawyers and statesmen
+of the peace-movement have given ample promise of surmounting, but the
+overwhelming obstacle is merely this--the peoples of Europe do not
+insist on the reform. Of all the large problems which confront the
+modern mind this is incomparably the simplest. We are hopelessly divided
+as to the nature of the remedy for most of our social ills. Here the
+remedy is acknowledged: the plan has been elaborated almost in entirety:
+the international tribunal already exists, and awaits only its
+executive, which the nations of Europe could supply to-morrow. It is the
+will, the demand, that is wanting. For that lack we charge the utter
+failure of the Churches during the ages of their power to enunciate a
+plain moral lesson, and their positive encouragement of an evil system.
+That is the real indictment. It affects the Christian Church in every
+nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY
+
+
+Any person who cares to read the reports of the utterances of our clergy
+in the current religious periodicals will recognise that they are
+painfully conscious of the reproach which this war implies. One
+constantly finds them repeating that in this year of tragedy
+"Christianity has failed" and "the gospel has broken in our hands." It
+had been their boast that Christianity had civilised Europe, and none of
+them has the audacity or indecency to claim, as some writers have done,
+that such a war is in harmony with the principles and ideals of
+civilisation. They have preached brotherhood and peace, and the greater
+part of Christendom is engaged in a strife of the most terrible nature.
+It is not a struggle of Christian and infidel; it is a struggle of
+Christian and Christian, and one or several of the Christian nations
+involved are guilty of a crime greater in magnitude than all the murders
+in Europe during a decade. Above all patriotism, above all immediate
+anxiety, above all argumentation about responsibility, this grim fact
+stands out and reproaches them: after fifteen hundred years of Christian
+preaching Europe is locked in the bloodiest struggle of all time.
+
+During the last fifty or hundred years the clergy have developed some
+expertness in making apologies. They have lived in a world of anxious
+questions and heated charges, and a special department called
+Apologetics has been added to theology. They are, it is true, sorely
+perplexed, divided in counsel, uneasy as to their procedure. Some would
+ignore the pertinacious outsider and persuade their followers that he is
+negligible; others would sustain an energetic campaign against him. Some
+would openly and candidly meet the questions of their followers; others
+would prefer not to unsettle the large number who never ask questions.
+At the present juncture it is impossible to be wholly silent. Some of
+the clergy, it seems--I learn this from the recorded words of eminent
+preachers--wish to ignore the war and go on with their business as
+usual. But the majority feel that such a procedure is dangerous. This
+violent breach of Christian principles by Christian nations requires
+some explanation. Where is the long-boasted moral influence of
+Christianity? Where is the all-loving ruler of the universe? Let us
+examine some of the apologies of the preachers.
+
+Let me confess that, from a long experience of this apologetic branch of
+theology, I am not surprised to find that not a single speaker or
+writer--as far as my reading of their utterances goes--fairly meets the
+main difficulty. Most of them, naturally, are content to plead that the
+war has been forced on Europe by Germany, and that therefore no
+responsibility lies on Christianity as a whole for the tragedy and the
+moral failure it involves. A large number of them go even farther. They
+point to the heroic sacrifices made in defence of an ideal by France,
+Belgium, England, and Russia--the millions of men streaming to the
+battle-field, the millions of women bravely enduring the suspense and
+the loss, the millions who generously open their purses to every
+philanthropic enterprise--and they acclaim this as a triumph of
+Christian civilisation. As to the failure of Christianity in Germany to
+stand the test, they either point superficially to the growth of
+Rationalism, Biblical Criticism, and Socialism in that country, or they
+take refuge in the confusions of the extreme pacifists and refuse to
+assign responsibility at all, or they persuade themselves that a small
+minority of men who were not Christians deluded the German people into
+consenting to the war. In any case, they insist that Christianity as a
+whole is not impeached. Assume that Austria was dragged into the war by
+Germany, and you have four Christian nations--five, if one includes
+Serbia--behaving with great gallantry and entire propriety, and only one
+Christian nation misbehaving.
+
+There is no doubt that this is the common religious attitude, but it
+does not satisfy some of the more thoughtful and earnest preachers. This
+optimism seems to them rebuked by the very fact that Christendom is in a
+state of war to which Paganism can offer no parallel. They think of the
+lands beyond the sea to which they have been sending the Christian
+message of peace and brotherhood. They fancy they see China and Japan
+smiling their faint but distressing smile at the situation in Christian
+Europe. They have assured all these distant peoples that their faith has
+built up a shining civilisation in Europe, and now there flash and
+quiver through the nerves of the world the daily messages of horror, of
+fierce hatred, of appalling carnage, of the wanton destruction by
+Christians of Christian temples. The Gospel has, somehow, broken down in
+Europe, they regretfully admit.
+
+But they never go beyond this vague admission and boldly state the sin
+of the Churches. One would imagine that, in spite of its obvious and
+lamentable failure, they still thought that their predecessors had been
+justified in preaching only the general terms of the Christian gospel
+and never applying it to war. One would fancy that they are so
+unacquainted with history as to suppose that during the long ages of the
+past the Churches were really frowning on violence and warfare, instead
+of blessing and employing it. They fear to draw out in its full
+proportion the inefficacy (because of its vagueness) of the gospel and
+the long perversion of its ministers. Yet we cannot evade this
+fundamental fact of the situation, that this particular war is an
+outcome of a general military system, and the Churches have a very grave
+responsibility for the maintenance of that system until the twentieth
+century. We all know how the technical moral theologian of recent times
+has glossed the complacency of his Church. He has drawn a distinction
+between offensive and defensive war, and, since the latter is obviously
+just, he has maintained that armies are rightly raised to wage it when
+necessary. On this petty fallacy the Churches have so long reconciled
+themselves to militarism, and have, in fact, been amongst its closest
+allies. The clergy did not, or would not, see that the retention of the
+military system was in itself the surest provocation of offensive war;
+that ambition or covetousness could almost always find a moral pretext
+for aggression, and that there have been comparatively few priests in
+the history of Europe who ever stood out and unmasked the hypocrisy of
+such monarchs. As long as the military system lasted, it was certain
+that wars would take place, yet they never denounced the system. The
+great conception of substituting justice for violence, law for
+lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the
+secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.
+
+For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have
+to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a
+unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its
+engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, assuredly, the
+Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique
+also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for
+that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the
+intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general
+culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in
+defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be
+connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and
+approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled,
+and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.
+
+But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to
+say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile
+their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure,
+to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this
+trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival
+which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few
+of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons
+of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more
+distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading
+religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these
+pronouncements and fail to realise that our generation acts not
+unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the
+clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern
+intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered
+and confusing emotions of the hour.
+
+One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from
+Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the
+Commonwealth and does assuredly express what multitudes of preachers are
+saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop
+Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his
+followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the
+Melbourne _Age_ (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had "very
+strong ideas about the war" (I quote the words of the _Age_), and "did
+not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some
+king or emperor." He believed that "the great God who provided for all
+human creatures, through the war was punishing sin that had prevailed
+for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity." The
+Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes
+as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises
+his conclusion:
+
+     "The reason that God was using the present war for the punishment
+     of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been
+     not merely neglect of the worship and service of God, which had
+     always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising
+     of human light and human understanding and human will against the
+     existence of the providence of God. It was not so common among us
+     here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in
+     which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural
+     faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think
+     they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of
+     their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such
+     men."
+
+Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical
+culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like
+him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their
+Church in our great and promising Commonwealth is not clear. In the
+course of this important sermon, in which he is delivering his very
+personal and mature conclusions on the greatest issue of the hour, the
+Archbishop observed that "the Roman Empire had been attacked by Attila"
+and "Attila scourged the Romans for the crimes of which they had for a
+long while been guilty." One is surprised that he did not add the pretty
+legend of the awe-stricken Hun retreating before the majestic figure of
+Pope Leo I. However, most of us are aware that, as a student in any
+college of Australia ought to be able to inform the Archbishop, Attila
+never reached within two hundred miles of Rome, and that the Pagan
+Romans, whom the Archbishop obviously has in mind, had been extinguished
+long before the monarch of the Huns was born. There is no greater
+historical scholarship in the other proofs which the prelate brings in
+support of his thesis that war is often deliberately sent as a
+punishment.
+
+But what are we to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of
+the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is
+based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval
+torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise,
+tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds
+they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of
+describing a refusal to assent to the doctrine of hell and heaven as a
+wilful rebellion of passion against the restraining influences of
+Christianity is going out of fashion. Christian people were meeting too
+many heretics in the flesh, and did not recognise the thing described
+from the pulpit. The sturdy Archbishop will have none of this pampering.
+Unbelief is a matter of the will as well as the understanding. And he
+actually believes that God guided the thoughts of William II in
+engineering this war--believes it for a reason a hundred times worse
+than the Kaiser's idea. He believes that God sent on Europe a war that
+will cost L10,000,000,000, that is blasting the homes and embittering
+the hearts of millions, that mingles the innocent and guilty in one
+common and fearful desolation, that sends millions to a premature death
+amidst circumstances which do not lend themselves to a devout
+preparation, that is raising storms of hatred and perverting the souls
+of millions, because a few other millions refuse to go to church. It
+would be difficult to conceive a cruder and more barbarous idea. Attila
+did not scourge the Romans, but he did scourge other peoples; and we
+hold him up to execration for ever for it. But Archbishop Carr, and many
+other preachers, think that an all-holy and all-intelligent God can do
+infinitely worse than Attila. He is going to punish the unbelievers in
+eternal fire when they die: meantime he will make a hell on earth for
+the innocent as well as the supposed guilty, the child and the mother as
+well as the free-thinking father. Of a truth, it is not surprising that
+a reluctance to listen to sermons has spread to Melbourne, and that men
+are wondering whether they had better not take in hand their own
+destinies rather than entrust them to such spiritual guides as this.
+
+Note, particularly, in passing the emphasis which the Archbishop puts on
+the determination of our generation to control its own destinies. Until
+the nineteenth century men entrusted their destinies, on the moral side,
+to guides like Archbishop Carr. I have described the result. In the
+nineteenth century there began this practice, which the Archbishop
+thinks worthy of so inhuman a chastisement, of men attending to their
+own moral interests. Of this also I have described the result. The moral
+sentiment of Europe has greatly improved, and there is at least a
+widespread revolt against warfare and a prospect of abolishing it. For
+this God, the more than human, scorched Europe with the horrible flames
+which Archbishop Carr thinks he keeps in his arsenal of
+torture-implements. The Archbishop says that infidelity has not spread
+so much in Australia. I should, if I were not well acquainted with the
+Commonwealth, be disposed to see in that the reason why eminent prelates
+can still utter such gross medieval nonsense in that country.
+
+In England this particularly crude type of nonsense is not usually
+uttered by preachers of distinction,[2] though it is common enough among
+less responsible preachers; but there is a dangerous approach to it in
+some of the sermons which the religious periodicals regard as
+important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I
+notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are,
+in harmony with his test, described as "the vultures of God." Germany,
+it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor
+Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his
+words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the action of God in the
+military conduct of the Allies, and to that extent he is hardly less
+revolting, in view of his culture, than the archbishop. Could the God of
+Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to
+sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent
+along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?
+
+More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent
+National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist
+preachers, the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the
+Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this
+gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it
+and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the
+speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in
+the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking
+question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest
+efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of
+the Churches.
+
+Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe,
+gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to "the
+failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity." He conceived it as
+"God's judgment upon the Church's failure seriously to devote herself
+to the great cause of peace on earth and good-will among men." With all
+their boasts of what Christianity had done in Europe, it now appeared
+that that civilisation was raised upon "foundations of sand." The
+preacher claimed that much was being done in modern times by the clergy
+to promote international amity, but he seemed to feel that it was little
+and was _very_ recent. The spectacle unfolded before us in Europe to-day
+is a sufficient proof of its inadequacy. And, as Mr. Rushbrooke said, we
+now see how little use it is to preach ideals at home and not apply them
+to the common life of the world.
+
+These words are the nearest to wisdom that I have found among a large
+collection of pulpit-utterances and religious articles. The preacher
+plainly sees, and with some measure of candour confesses, that long
+remissness of Christian ministers in applying their principles to which
+the war, and all wars, are fundamentally due. The record which he
+carefully makes of recent efforts to redeem the failure is paltry in
+comparison with the resources even of the Free Churches, and only serves
+to bring out more clearly the awful neglect of Christian ministers
+during the long ages when they had a mighty power in Europe. But Mr.
+Rushbrooke makes one grave error. He feels that not merely the relation
+of the war to Christianity, but its relation to God, is engaging public
+attention, and he stumbles into the theory that God sent the war. It is
+"God's judgment on the Church's failure." We must suppose that Mr.
+Rushbrooke did not literally mean what he said. His words imply a theory
+of the war more monstrous even than that of Archbishop Carr. To punish
+Europe for the sins of unbelievers has at least a genuine medieval
+plausibility about it; but to send this indescribable plague on the
+nations of Europe because the clergy failed to do their duty.... One
+must really assume that Mr. Rushbrooke did not mean what he said, and
+leave the sentence unfinished. What he meant it is impossible to
+conjecture. To the religious mind "God's judgment" means a chastisement
+sent by God. But, whatever Mr. Rushbrooke meant, he had been wiser to
+leave the idea of God out of his comments on this war, and to say
+frankly that it would bring on them and on their predecessors, on the
+whole of Christianity, the judgment of man and the judgment of history
+for their neglect of their opportunities.
+
+The Rev. A. T. Guttery addressed the Council in a more cheerful mood,
+and his reflections are characteristic of a large group of the clergy.
+He would not for a moment allow the failure of Christianity. The
+Churches had, he said, been so successful in compelling the world to
+recognise the evil of aggressive warfare that even the Germans were
+eager to describe their action as purely defensive. "The Pagan glory of
+war for its own sake was gone." And when we acknowledge the comparative
+failure of religion in Germany, and restrict our attention to the sphere
+of our own clergy, we find that they have created an entirely new
+spirit. The lust for territory and for gold is felt no more in England.
+Here there is no mafficking over victories, there are no hymns of hate.
+The British nation has been sobered by the influence of Christianity. We
+may regret that the German people has not proved equally susceptible,
+and its pastors equally energetic, but we cannot bear their burden.
+Their naughtiness alone has disturbed the moral progress which, even in
+this department, Christianity was fostering.
+
+This is, I think, a very usual attitude of the clergy, and I have
+already appreciated the sound element of it. There is no comparison
+between the behaviour of the two nations. Whether England deserves quite
+all the compliments which Mr. Guttery showers upon it may be a matter of
+opinion. We have as yet little cause for "mafficking," but there is very
+little doubt that it will occur on a grandiose scale before the war is
+over. We do not sing hymns of hate; but it might be hazardous to
+speculate what we would do if some nation drew an iron ring round our
+country and reduced us almost to a condition of starvation. We have no
+lust for territory--I am not sure about the lust for gold--because we
+have in our Empire territory enough for our population; and we may wait
+to see if England does not annex any part of Germany's African or
+Pacific possessions. Mr. Guttery's contrast is crude and superficial. He
+ignores the economic and geographical conditions which give us a feeling
+of content and Germany a profound feeling of discontent and a dangerous
+ambition. The German character is not in itself inferior to ours, and it
+were well for us to fancy ourselves in Germany's position and wonder if
+we would have acted otherwise.
+
+On the other hand, I have freely acknowledged, or claimed, that there
+has been a great improvement in the moral temper of Europe, and that
+this is especially seen in the odium that is now cast on aggressive or
+offensive war. But to claim this improvement for the credit of religion
+is, to say the least, audacious. The more simple-minded of Mr. Guttery's
+hearers would imagine that the change set in with the fall of Paganism.
+"The Pagan glory of war for its own sake is gone." When clerical writers
+speak of Paganism they think that any evil deed ever done by a Pagan is
+characteristic of the whole body; they ask us to apply a different
+standard to their own body. Plato and Socrates were Pagans; Marcus
+Aurelius and Antoninus Pius--to speak of warriors and statesmen--were
+Pagans. The truth is that a glory in war for its own sake was no more
+generally characteristic of Paganism than it was of Christian Europe
+until a century ago: it was probably less. Most of the German Emperors
+and of the Kings of England, France, and Spain would fairly come under
+the description which Mr. Guttery calls Pagan. One hardly needs to know
+much of history to perceive that this moral improvement in the
+conception of war belongs to the last century and a half, and it is
+somewhat bold to claim that a change which made no appearance during a
+thousand years of profound Christian influence, and did begin to appear
+and make progress as that faith waned, can be claimed for Christianity.
+I do not forget that the theologian began long ago, in the seclusion of
+his cell or study, to condemn offensive warfare. But there have been
+hundreds of offensive wars waged by Christian monarchs since that date,
+and we do not read of any instance in which the clergy failed to endorse
+the thin casuistry by which the offensive was turned into a defensive or
+a preventive war, or refused to sanction an entire neglect of the
+principle.
+
+Dr. Scott-Lidgett followed on somewhat similar lines. The whole trouble,
+he protested, was due to an anti-Christian, illiberal, and inhuman
+system. It seems that he was referring to Prussia, and it is regrettable
+that he did not feel called to explain why that system prevails in the
+year of the Lord 1915, or how it finds an instrument of its ambition in
+a militarism that ought to have been denounced and abolished centuries
+ago. Mr. Shakespeare, another distinguished Nonconformist, follows the
+same facile course--casts all the responsibility on Germany--and equally
+fails to explain how Germany came to find the machinery of destruction
+at its hand in our age.
+
+In fine, Dean Welldon, one of the most energetic spokesmen of the Church
+of England, addressed this Free Church Council, and imparted an element
+of originality. He used the inconclusive and dangerous argument of _tu
+quoque_. If, he said, you claim that this war exhibits the failure of
+Christianity, you must admit that it shows equally the failure of
+science and civilisation. Nay, he says, growing bolder, if your
+contention is true, Christianity has done no more than supply the
+instrument of its own destruction, but science and civilisation have
+brought us back to savagery.
+
+It is, of course, difficult to follow a man's rounded thought in the
+crabbed phrases of an abbreviating reporter, but it is plain that Dean
+Welldon has here been guilty of a confusion which only betrays his
+apologetic poverty in face of this great crisis. Science--and it is
+especially science that the clergy conceive as the rival they have to
+discredit--has no concern whatever with the war. Science, either as an
+organised body of teachers or as a branch of culture, has never
+discussed war, and never had the faintest duty or opportunity to do so.
+Economic science may discuss particular aspects of war, but the
+economist deals with things as they are, not as they ought to be. Moral
+science even is not a preaching agency, desirous of dividing with the
+clergy the ethical guidance of the people. When men pit science against
+religion, they usually refer to its superior power of explaining
+reality. And if it be objected that therefore no morally educative
+agency would remain if religion were discarded, the answer is simple. A
+system of moral idealism founded on science--it is absurd to call it
+science--does exist, and might at any time be enlarged to the
+proportions of a national or international educative agency. As yet it
+is left to individual cultivation or crystallised in a few tiny
+associations, such as Ethical and Secularist and, partly, Socialist
+Societies; and I venture to say, from a large experience of these
+bodies, that, apart from the professed peace societies, they have been
+more assiduous than any religious associations in England, in proportion
+to their work, in demanding the substitution of arbitration for war, and
+that the overwhelming majority, almost the entirety, of their members
+are pacifists. To speak of this small organised force, with its slender
+influence, as equally discredited with the far mightier and
+thousand-year-older influence of the Churches would be strangely
+incongruous; and it is hardly less incongruous to drag science into the
+comparison.
+
+A somewhat similar distinction must be observed in regard to
+civilisation. The antithesis of religion and civilisation is confused
+and confusing. Christian ministers have claimed that _they_ are the
+moral element of civilisation, and they have jealously combated every
+effort to take from them or divide with them that function. They resist
+every attempt to exclude their almost useless Bible-lessons from our
+schools, and to substitute for them a direct and more practical moral
+education of children. They have for fifteen hundred years claimed and
+possessed the monopoly of ethical culture in European civilisation, and
+we are a little puzzled when they turn round and say, with an air of
+argument, that if Christianity has failed civilisation also has failed.
+There is only one civilisation in Europe that has attempted to
+substitute a humanitarian for a religious training of conduct; one
+nation that is plainly and overwhelmingly non-Christian. That nation is
+France. And France has one of the best moral records in modern Europe,
+and has behaved nobly throughout this lamentable business. In fine, if
+we take Dean Welldon's words in the most generous sense, if we assume
+that he refers to the whole body of culture and sentiment which, in our
+time, aspires to mould and direct the race apart from Christian
+doctrine, the answer has already been given. Christianity is, as a power
+in Europe, fourteen centuries old; this humanitarianism is hardly a
+century old. But there has surely been more progress made during this
+last century toward the destruction of the military system, and more
+progress in the elimination of brutality from war, than in the whole
+preceding thirteen centuries. Does Dean Welldon doubt that? Or does he
+regard it as a mere coincidence?
+
+Thus, whether we turn to Churchman or Nonconformist, to cleric or
+layman, we find no satisfactory apology. I have before me a short
+article by Mr. Max Pemberton on the question, "Will Christianity survive
+the war?" He uses the most consecrated phrases of the Church, and leaves
+no doubt whatever that he writes in defence of Christianity. But Mr.
+Pemberton practically confines himself to a very emphatic personal
+assurance that Christianity _will_ survive the war, and does not
+honestly face a single one of the questions of "the Pagan" against whom
+he is writing. He does make one serious point of a peculiar character.
+There are, he says, "23,000 priests fighting for France in the
+trenches." Mr. Pemberton seems to find it easy to accept the interested
+statements of those Roman Catholic journalists who make sectarian use of
+some of the London dailies. There are only about 30,000 priests in
+France, and, since none of them are younger than twenty-three, to
+suppose that seventy-five per cent. of them are of military age is to
+take a remarkable view of the population of France. In any case, there
+is no special ground for rhapsody. They are not volunteers; in France
+every man must do his civic duty. We may appreciate their devotion to
+their religion on the battle-field, but Mr. Pemberton must be
+imperfectly acquainted with the French character if he supposes that the
+thirty-four million unbelievers of France are going to return to the
+Church because the younger _cures_ did not try to evade the military
+service which the State imposed on them.
+
+Another document I may quote is a manifesto issued by the "Hampstead
+Evangelical Free Church Council," a joint declaration of the principal
+Nonconformist ministers of that highly cultivated suburb. It does not
+purport to vindicate the Churches, yet some of its observations in
+connection with the war open out a new page of apologetics. These
+clergymen invite all the citizens of their district, on the ground of
+the war, to attend church, even if they have not been in the habit of
+doing so. On what more precise ground? The able lawyer who received this
+invitation, and forwarded it to me, thought it, not the most ingenious,
+but the most curious, piece of pleading he had ever known. The citizens
+of Hampstead were invited to go to church "to offer up to God a
+sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for his goodness to us as a
+nation"! At the very time the eminent preachers were writing this, the
+darkened city still cowered under the threat of a horrible outrage; the
+shattered homes and fresh graves of Scarborough and Whitby reminded us
+faintly of the horrors beyond the sea; the maimed soldiers all over the
+country, the sad figures of the bereaved, the anxious hearts of a
+million of our people, were but a beginning of the evil that had fallen
+on us. We had in fourteen years, since the last war, been obliged to
+spend a thousand millions sterling in preparation for a war we did not
+desire, and we were entering upon an expenditure of something more than
+a thousand millions in a year. All this we had incurred through no fault
+of ours. And these clergymen thought it a good opportunity to invite us
+to go to church to thank God for "his goodness to us as a nation."
+
+Another manifesto is signed by a body of archbishops and bishops of the
+Anglican Church. It enjoined all the faithful to supplicate the Almighty
+on January 3rd to stop the war. This was to be done "all round the
+Empire." I will not indulge in any cheap sarcasm as to the result,
+though one would probably be right in saying that, if the end be
+deferred to the year 1917, they will still believe that their prayers
+had effect. What it is more material to notice is that the prelates
+think that "these are days of great spiritual opportunity." It seems
+that "the shattering of so much that seemed established reveals the
+vanity of human affairs," and that "anxiety, separation, and loss have
+made many hearts sensible of the approach of Christ to the soul." It is,
+perhaps, unkind to examine this emotional language from an intellectual
+point of view, but one feels that there is a subtle element of apology
+in it. These spiritual advantages may outweigh the secular pain; may
+even justify God's share in the great catastrophe. I have examined, and
+will discuss more fully in the next chapter, the theistic side of this
+plea. Intellectually, it borders on monstrosity: it is the survival of
+an ancient and barbaric conception. The notion that "the approach of
+Christ to the soul" is felt especially in time of affliction is merely a
+statement of a certain type of emotional experience, while the
+revelation of "the vanity of human affairs" is sheer perversity. Human
+affairs have for ages been so badly managed, in this respect, that we
+cannot in a decade or a century rid ourselves of such a legacy. The real
+moral is to discover who were responsible for that legacy of disorder
+and violence, and to put our affairs on a new and sounder basis.
+
+A considerable number of clerical writers proceed on the suggestion
+discreetly advanced by these Anglican prelates. Let us wait, they ask,
+until the clouds of war have rolled away, and then estimate the
+spiritual gain to men from the trial through which they have passed, and
+the closer association of the Churches which it may bring about. Now I
+have no doubt that many who really believe the doctrines of
+Christianity, yet have for years neglected the duties which their belief
+imposes on them, will be induced by this awful experience to return to
+allegiance. The number is limited, and an equal or greater number may
+be, and probably will be, induced to surrender religion entirely, and
+with good reason, by the reflections with which this war inspires them.
+But to insinuate that this spiritual advantage, if it be an advantage,
+of the few is justly purchased by the appalling suffering and disorder
+brought about by the war is one of those religious affirmations which
+seem to the outsider positively repulsive.
+
+I do not speak merely of the deaths, the pain, the privation, the
+outrages, the flood of tears and blood over half of Europe. This,
+indeed, is of itself enough to make the theory repellent to any who do
+not share the ascetic views taught in the Churches. The notion that an
+evil is justified if good issue from it is akin to the notion that the
+end justifies the means. But I would draw attention to an aspect of the
+war which is almost ignored by these eloquent preachers. They eagerly
+record every flash of heroism, every spark of charity and mercy, that
+the war evokes. They refer sympathetically to the dead and the bereaved,
+the outraged girls and women--whom, in the narrowest Puritanism, they
+forbid to rid themselves of the awful burden laid on them by drunken
+brutes--the shattered homes and monuments. But there is a side of war
+which they must know, and it demands plain speaking. It relaxes the
+control of moral restraints even where it was before operative. The
+illegitimate-birth rate of England and France will faintly tell the
+story before the year is out. Inquiry in any town where our soldiers are
+lodged, or in the rear of the French and English (or any other)
+trenches, will tell it more fully. I do not speak of crime and violence,
+but of willing sexual intercourse where it was never known before. These
+things, and the increased drunkenness and the stirring of old passions,
+are regarded by the clergy as amongst the most evil things of life. Do
+they seriously suggest that they have been brought in to secure, or are
+justified by, the spiritual advantage of the refined and emotional few
+whose religion is only deepened by affliction?
+
+In short, I find not a single phrase of valid explanation or apology in
+these and other prominent clerical pronouncements I have read. They are
+superficial, contradictory, and vapid. Nothing is more common than for
+religious writers to protest that the conception of reality which is
+opposed to theirs is shallow. What depth, what sincere grip of reality,
+does one find in any of these pulpit utterances? Yet I have taken the
+pronouncements of official bodies or of distinguished preachers who may
+be trusted to put the Christian feeling in its most persuasive form. One
+thinks that God sent the war; another attributes it to German rebels
+against God. One regards it as a spiritual agency devised for our good;
+another says that it is an unmitigated calamity sent for our punishment.
+One sees in it the failure of Christianity; others find in it precisely
+a confirmation of Christian teaching. Some think it will draw men to
+God; others that it will drive men from God. Unity, perhaps, we cannot
+expect; but the empty rhetoric and utter sophistry of most of these
+utterances reveal the complete lack of defence. On the main indictment
+of the Christian Church, its failure to have condemned and removed
+militarism long ago, all are silent; or the one preacher who notices it
+can only dejectedly confess that it is true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WAR AND THEISM
+
+
+In the leading Catholic periodical of this country there has been some
+nervous discussion of the attitude of the Pope. A new man, a strong and
+enlightened man, happens to have mounted the chair of Peter in the midst
+of the war. For more than a century his predecessors have bemoaned the
+increasing wickedness of the world: Pius VII, tossed like a helpless
+cork on the waves of the Revolution; Leo XII and Pius VIII, the
+associates of the Holy Alliance; Gregory XVI, eating sweetmeats or
+mumbling his breviary while young Italy sweated blood; Pius IX, grasping
+eagerly his tatters of sovereignty; Leo XIII, the unsuccessful
+diplomatist; Pius X, the medieval monk. They saw their Church shrink
+decade by decade, and they witnessed the prosperity of all that they
+denounced. Benedict XV came to save the Church, and a great moral
+opportunity awaited him. But, while claiming to be the moral arbitrator
+of the world, he avoids his plain duty, and is content to repeat the
+worn phrases about the iniquity of the modern spirit. His apologists say
+that the war is politics, and that Popes must not interfere in politics.
+
+I have earlier explained in what sense this war presents a political
+aspect to Benedict XV, and given the reason for his reluctance. It is
+typical of the whole failure of Christianity. A little over nineteen
+centuries ago, it is said in the churches, a star shone over the cradle
+of the Saviour, and choirs of angels announced his coming as a promise
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men." I am not in this little
+work examining the whole question of the influence of Christianity. But
+it is well to recall that, according to its own records, its first and
+greatest promise to the world was peace; and to that old Roman Empire,
+and to Europe at any stage in its later history, no greater blessing
+could have been brought. Has Christianity succeeded?
+
+But the religious interest of the war is by no means exhausted when we
+have concluded that it marks, in one of the most important departments
+of human action, the complete failure of historical Christianity. My
+purpose is to discuss this relation to the Churches, and it would not be
+completed unless I considered the war in relation to their fundamental
+doctrine, the moral government of the universe by a Supreme Being. In a
+few months, we hope, the war will be over: the Allies will have
+triumphed. We know, from experience and from history, what will follow
+in the Churches. From end to end of Britain, from Dover to Penzance and
+from Southampton to Aberdeen, there will rise a jubilant cry that God
+has blessed our arms and awarded us the victory. Now that we are in the
+midst of the horrors and burdens of the war God is little mentioned. One
+would imagine that the great majority of the clergy conceived him as
+standing aside, for some inscrutable reason, and letting wicked men
+deploy their perverse forces. When the triumph comes, gilding the past
+sacrifices or driving them from memory, God will be on every lip. The
+whole nation will be implored to come and kneel before the altars.
+Royalty and nobility and military, judges and stockbrokers and working
+men--above all, a surging, thrilling, ecstatic mass of women--will
+gather round the clergy, and will avow that they see the finger of God
+in this glorious consummation. The relation of the war to God will then
+become the supreme consideration for the Christian mind. It may be more
+instructive to consider it now, before the last flood of emotion pours
+over our judgments.
+
+I have already discussed some of the clerical allusions to the share of
+God in the war. They are so frankly repellent that one cannot be
+surprised that the majority of the clergy prefer to be silent on that
+point. They prefer to await the victory and build on its more genial and
+indulgent emotions. The war is either a blessing or a curse. One would
+think that there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are
+bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily
+pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of
+the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human
+nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, and
+so on.
+
+Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse,
+yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty. This theory is
+natural enough in the minds of men and women who believe in hell. In
+earlier ages men could not distinguish between the law of retaliation
+and the need to deter criminals by using violence against them when they
+transgressed. In many primitive systems of justice the law of
+retaliation is expressly consecrated. It is even introduced,
+inconsistently and as a survival of barbaric times, in the Babylonian
+and the Judaic codes, side by side with saner views. It is, of course,
+merely a systematisation of brute passion. In the beginning, if a man
+knocked your tooth out, you knocked one of his teeth out. With the
+growth of law and justice, the barbarous nature of the impulse was
+recognised, and the community, by its representatives, inflicted a
+"punishment" on the offender instead of allowing the offended to
+retaliate. With the modern improvement of moral sentiments we have
+realised that this is an imperfect advance on the barbaric idea. The
+community has no more right to "punish" than the offended individual
+had. We now impose hardship on an offender only for the purpose of
+intimidating him from repeating the offence, or of deterring others from
+offending. The idea is still somewhat crude, and a third stage will in
+time be reached; but it is satisfactory that we now--not since the
+advent of Christianity, but since the rise of modern humanism--all admit
+that the only permissible procedure is deterrence, and not punishment as
+such.
+
+It may seem ungracious to be ever repeating that these improvements did
+not take place during the period of Christian influence, but in the
+recent period of its decay. There is, however, in this case a most
+important and urgent reason for emphasising the fact. I say that we
+_all_ admit the more humane conception of punishment, but this must be
+qualified. In human affairs we do: Carlyle was, perhaps, the last
+moralist to cling to the old conception. But in the religious world the
+old idea has been flagrantly retained. The doctrine of eternal
+punishment is clearly based on the barbaric old idea that a prince whose
+dignity has been insulted may justly inflict the most barbarous
+punishment on the offender. Theologians have, since the days of Thomas
+Aquinas, wasted whole reams of parchment in defending the dogma of hell,
+because they knew nothing whatever of comparative jurisprudence and the
+evolution of moral ideas. To us the development of the doctrine is
+clear. In the Christian doctrine of hell we have a flagrant survival of
+the early barbaric theory of punishment. Modern divines--while
+continuing to describe the non-religious view of life as "superficial"
+and the Christian as "profound"--have actually yielded to the modern
+sentiment, and in a very large measure rejected one of the fundamental
+dogmas of the Christian tradition. In order to conceal the procedure as
+far as possible, some of them are now contending brazenly that Christ
+never taught the doctrine of eternal punishment, and are deluding their
+uncultivated congregations with sophistical manipulations of Greek
+words.
+
+This does not mean that Christians have lower moral sentiments than
+non-Christians, but that the rigidity of their traditions, which they
+regard as sacred and unalterable, imposes restrictions on them. Hence
+the fact that, while Protestants have so very largely rejected the
+doctrine of hell, Roman Catholics, with their more rigid conservatism
+and claim of infallibility, still cling to it, and offer the amazing
+spectacle of a body claiming to possess the highest ideals in the world,
+yet actually cherishing an entirely barbaric theory. There is probably
+not a Catholic lawyer in the world who does not reject the old idea of
+punishment as barbaric, yet he placidly believes that God retains it.
+That is why we find a Catholic archbishop like Carr putting forth so
+revolting an idea of the war, while Protestant preachers as a rule
+shrink from mentioning God in connection with it. These things make it
+impossible for one to understand how non-Christians can say, as they do
+sometimes, that if they _were_ to accept a creed, it would be the Roman
+creed.
+
+Any theory of the war which proceeds on the lines of the hell-theory is
+simply barbaric, and is beneath serious discussion. We know to-day that
+both ethics and religion are in a state of constant evolution. We look
+back over a stream of several thousand years of historically traceable
+development; we follow that stream faintly through earlier tens of
+thousands of years in the ideas of primitive peoples; and we see the
+evolution going on plainly in the creeds and ethical codes of our own
+time. But the practice of registering certain stages of this evolution
+in sacred books or codes, which are then imposed on man for centuries or
+millennia as something unalterable, has been and is a very serious
+hindrance to development, both in ethics and religion. It is all the
+worse because these codes and sacred books always contain certain
+elements which belong to even earlier and less enlightened stages, and
+whole regiments of philosophers or theologians are employed for ages in
+putting glosses on ancient and barbaric ideas at which the world
+eventually laughs. However, we need not linger here over these ancient
+ways of regarding life. The man who keeps his God at a moral level which
+we disdain ourselves rarely listens to argument. He protects his "faith"
+by believing that it is a mortal sin (involving sentence of hell) to
+read any book that would examine it critically. It is a most ingenious
+arrangement by which the doctrine of a vindictive God protects itself
+against moral progress.
+
+Now any suggestion that God sent this war upon Europe--whether as a
+judgment on the clergy, or a judgment on unbelievers, or a judgment on
+the arrogance of the Germans, etc.--is part of this old barbarism, and
+may be disregarded. It conceives that God is vindictive, and at the same
+time assures us that Christianity sternly condemns vindictiveness. It
+allows God to deal mighty blows at those who affront him, and tells men
+to bear affront with patience and turn the other cheek to the smiter. It
+is simply part of that mixture and confusion of old and new ideas which
+a codified religion always exhibits. We pass it by, and turn to more
+serious considerations. I pass by also eccentric ideas of Deity like
+those of Sir Oliver Lodge or Mr. G. B. Shaw--two oracles who have been
+singularly silent on the religious aspect of the war. Let us examine the
+main religious problem as broadly and as honestly as we can.
+
+The first and chief reflection that occurs to any man who does thus
+seriously examine the relation of the war to theism is that, after all,
+it is not so easy to disentangle theology from the crude old doctrines
+which our more liberal divines think they have abandoned. They tell us
+that they do not believe in a vindictive Deity, they disdain the
+doctrine of eternal punishment, they smile at many of the Judaic
+conceptions of Jehovah in the Old Testament. God is the all-holy and
+benevolent ruler of the universe. They refuse to believe that the souls
+of sinners and unbelievers are tortured for ever after death, and trust
+the whole scheme of things to the love and justice of God.
+
+The grave difficulty of this enlightened theology, indeed of all
+theology, is the immense amount of pain and evil in the universe, and
+this mighty war we are considering puts it in a very acute form. It is
+amusing to look back on some of the lines of apologetics in recent
+years. There was a school of people, following some "profound" religious
+thinker, who held that evil was "only relative." They made the wonderful
+discovery that everything real is good, in the metaphysical sense, and
+evil is unreal. Evil, they said, is merely the negation, the
+falling-short, of good; and you do not ask for the creator or cause of a
+negative thing. More recently a school endeavoured to come to their
+assistance with the discovery that pain does not really exist at all.
+One did not need to know philosophy or science in order to realise that
+a sensation of pain is just as positive and real a thing as a sensation
+of pleasure; or that, although death is _only_ the negation of life, one
+is really entitled to ask why one's dear child is thus "negated" at the
+age of six or twelve. Then there came this new school with its discovery
+that pain does not exist. Death, of course, is an entry into a more
+glorious life beyond; pain is an illusion to be banished by resolute
+thought. These childish symposia were interrupted every few years by
+some disastrous earthquake, the sinking of a great liner, an epidemic of
+disease, a famine, and so on; but the pious philosophers bravely
+struggled on. One may trust that the war has reduced them to silence,
+and that we need not linger over them.
+
+Then there was the school which sought desperately to find good in evil.
+A man or woman is stricken with disease. Very often it brings with it a
+softening, an improvement, of character; either in the patient or in the
+nurses, or in both. Our religious philosophers fancied they caught in
+this a glimpse of the divine plan: cancer was an instrument of
+righteousness in the hands of the Almighty, the bacillus of
+tuberculosis was a moral agency. They detected cases in which adverse
+fortune had sobered and softened a man: the finger of Providence. In
+France there was a very considerable return to the Catholic Church, and
+recovery of its power, after the disastrous war of 1870. In the south of
+Italy there is always much less sexual freedom for a time after an
+earthquake has buried a few tens of thousands under the ruins of their
+houses. I would undertake to fill a quarto volume with instances of good
+things which arose out of or followed upon evil experiences. We saw that
+the present war is being examined in the same respect. There are "great
+spiritual opportunities": hundreds of thousands of young men are being
+compelled (by the authorities) to go to church who had not been for
+years; the different denominations are fraternising as they never did
+before; the churches are rather fuller than they had been of late:
+charity is awakened on a prodigious scale; zeal for an ideal (the
+violated peace of Belgium) is dragging men even from our slums to the
+colours. Here again one could at least fill a moderate treatise with the
+things achieved; and beyond them all is the unuttered vision of the
+crowded churches at the triumphant close of the war, perhaps that
+long-coveted religious revival.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that this theory of the war will be
+assiduously pressed when nature has drawn her green mantle once more
+over the blackened area of the war and our hearts are lifted up by
+thought of victory. It is already being urged, and I would add a little
+to the comments I have already passed on it.
+
+The clergy would do well to realise that, whatever virtue this theory
+may have in soothing the minds and dissolving the doubts of their
+followers, to an outsider it seems monstrous. In the first place, it
+includes no sense of proportion, and amounts to a colossal untruth. We
+must surely take into account the amount of evil inflicted and the
+amount of good that ensues. Take sickness, for instance. One would
+imagine that, if Christians seriously believe that illness is sent by
+God to achieve certain salutary modifications of character, they ought
+strenuously to oppose the modern determination to reduce disease to a
+minimum. They do not, and would, on the contrary, soon reduce to silence
+any religious crank who proposed it. They know perfectly well that the
+cases of "spiritual advantage" from illness bear no proportion whatever
+to the amount of suffering in the world. Slight but painful illnesses
+rarely have any beneficent effect on character; very frequently the
+reverse. Any large city, at any given moment, is racked with pains which
+do but give rise to curses, or a polite equivalent. Most of the
+irritation and perversion of character is due to morbid influences. And
+for every case in which a long illness issues in some signal advance of
+character, a hundred others could be quoted in which the illness was an
+unmitigated calamity. So it is with bereavement and with adversity of
+fortune. Look honestly into the experience of any class of the
+community, and ask in what _proportion_ of cases narrowness of means,
+especially after comfort, brings a "spiritual advantage."
+
+So it is above all with this war. Any man who thinks that the awful
+perversion of the character of a great European people, the death of
+such vast numbers in such painful circumstances, the ruin of further
+millions, and all the innumerable ugly results of a great war, were
+worth bringing about in order to secure a few spiritual advantages has
+neither sense of proportion nor sense of decency nor sense of humour.
+The theory would be too repulsive if it were put in this plain form, and
+it is more usual merely to point out these good results and hint that
+war is not absolutely and in every respect an evil. As if any person
+ever said that it was. The point is simple, and ought not to be
+obscured. A few incidental advantages do not reconcile us to this
+colossal misery, suffering, and waste, and do not in the slightest
+degree alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed
+human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed
+such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary
+disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained,
+what should we think of him?
+
+The parallel reminds us that of infinite wisdom we expect infinitely
+more than of a human ruler. Once unintelligent nature had a crude,
+wasteful, hard method of producing new and higher types of life. Man,
+having intelligence, produces the same result without waste or
+suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an
+intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man
+who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human
+ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they
+bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us
+of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the
+war was designed for certain practical uses, such as those we have had
+suggested by various divines, one may reply at once that a more brutal
+and unjust way of attaining those ends could not have been devised. It
+is almost impossible to conceive any man seriously entertaining the
+notion. Yet all the jubilation and thanksgiving that will follow the
+war, all the supplication that accompanies its fortunes to-day, and the
+whole teaching of Christian theology, imply that God did direct the
+political movements and military ambitions which have culminated in the
+war. Even a human statesman could have devised a less terrible method of
+attaining any end that has yet been conceived for the war. The idea of
+the war as a punishment is quite logical and intelligible, though five
+hundred years out of date. But the idea of the war as a medicinal or an
+educative process has neither logic nor intelligibility, and does not
+even attain that consistency with modern ethical sentiments which it
+seeks. The colossal amount of suffering inflicted on innocent people and
+on children puts it entirely out of court.
+
+Thirdly, this theory, as I said, raises the question whether the end
+justifies the means. Here we have another illustration of the way in
+which Christian dogma keeps the Christian conscience in many matters
+behind the ethical sentiment of the age. Many liberal divines would
+express genuine repugnance at Archbishop Carr's view of the war; yet
+some of the most liberal of these divines and laymen are almost as
+backward in another direction. They justify the world-process through
+which we are struggling on the ground that it will, we hope, issue in a
+nobler order of things: of the war, in particular, that hope is
+entertained, and to the war, accordingly, this theory of justification
+is applied. That is a case of the end justifying the means. Christian
+thinkers are advancing so rapidly and erratically that in some cases we
+are not clear whether the writer does or does not regard God as infinite
+in power and intelligence. We may ignore these few cases. The vast
+majority emphatically hold that view. In their regard we can say only
+what has been said a hundred times. Whether you speak of the
+world-process in general or any particular cruel phase of it, such as
+this war, you maintain that God chose, out of many conceivable ways, the
+one way that is marked by cruelty and suffering. An infinite God is not
+so confined in the choice of means. And just as we say of the
+world-process in general, that to build the sunnier lives of a remote
+generation on the sufferings of this and earlier generations implies a
+grave injustice to _us_, so we must say of the war. No spiritual
+advantages to those who survive will reconcile us to the suffering and
+the loss of those who fell in the tragic combat. I speak impersonally.
+It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I
+nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood
+over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing
+experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the whole ghastly orgy of
+blood and tears in Europe, I feel unutterable disdain of these paltry
+efforts to justify the ways of God to man.
+
+Let us look a little deeper into the matter. No doubt the plain
+statement that God "sent" or caused this war will excite a certain
+repugnance in many Christian minds. They will prefer to say that God
+"permitted" it. Man has "free will," and it is the plan of providence to
+give a certain play to this free will. When man has bruised his
+shins--more frequently the shins of other people--God may, on being
+supplicated sufficiently, issue his veto and put matters right. I am
+quite acquainted, from a severe theological education, with the more
+learned language in which this theory is expressed by theologians, but
+I prefer to deal with it as it exists in the words of most preachers
+and the minds of most Christians.
+
+It would be impossible here to deal at any length with the doctrine of
+free will. Unless you conceive it in some novel and irrelevant sense, as
+Professor Bergson does, it is a very much disputed thing amongst the
+experts whose business it is to inform us on the subject--our
+psychologists. The majority of modern psychologists seem to reject it
+altogether. On the other hand, no theologian has ever yet reconciled it
+in any intelligible scheme with the supposed omnipotence of God. But it
+is not necessary to enter into these abstruse considerations. Let us
+take the matter in the concrete.
+
+We look back to-day on a long series of processes and circumstances
+which culminate in the war. There is the whole history of Germany for a
+hundred and fifty years inspiring the German people with a bias toward
+aggressive war; there are the economic and geographical circumstances
+which, at the end of the nineteenth century, begin to make it think
+again of aggressive war; there is the overflowing population, bred by
+order of the clergy who stupidly condemn an artificial restriction of
+births; there is the coincident trouble of Austria with the Slavs, of
+England with its subject peoples, and so on. In the eyes of the careful
+student a hundred lines of circumstance and development have led to this
+war. The melodramatic idea that it all springs from the free will of the
+Kaiser, or of a group of soldiers and statesmen, need not be seriously
+considered. Moreover, even when we introduce the personal element--and
+the personality of the Kaiser has had a very considerable influence--it
+is foolish to throw the whole burden on free will. The mood and outlook
+and ambition of the Kaiser take their colour from his notoriously morbid
+nervous frame. In a word, you have a mighty concurrence of movements,
+whether acts of will or otherwise, converging in all parts of Europe
+toward this war. Was God indifferent to the whole of those movements?
+
+Those movements are particularly traceable in Europe during the last
+fourteen years. Before that there was a similar concurrence of movements
+eventuating in the South African War; and in the meantime a series of
+processes and circumstances had given us the Russo-Japanese War and the
+Balkan-Turkish War and the Mexican War. So we might go over the wars of
+the nineteenth century and all earlier wars. The "permissiveness" or
+indifference of the ruler of the universe grows amazingly. In the
+meantime we had mighty catastrophes like the sinking of the _Titanic_
+and other ships, the earthquakes at Messina and elsewhere, famines and
+epidemics and floods in various places, and great numbers of murders,
+railway and other accidents, etc. We begin to ask _where_ the ruling of
+the universe comes in at all, and, as far as human events go, all that
+we can gather in the way of reply is that sometimes individuals who pray
+very fervently get their diseases healed or their coffers filled; and
+even these claims do not pass rational inquiry.
+
+Now here is the precise difficulty of the unbeliever, and this present
+tragedy makes it acute. We ask our neighbour, or seek in some learned
+theological treatise, what are the indications of this government of the
+universe, and we are told about the making of stars and the decoration
+of flowers and the putting of instincts into animals or pretty patterns
+on their skins. But when we point out that the really important thing
+in our part of the universe is this human life of ours, imperfectly
+protected as yet against disease and malice (which is largely disease)
+and natural forces, the theologian has no clear evidence to produce.
+Even the evidence he draws from stars and flowers and peacocks' tails
+and sunsets, with which he is, as a rule, very imperfectly acquainted,
+is, of course, heatedly disputed, and the proper authorities on these
+subjects are, on the whole, not well disposed toward his interpretation.
+But we need not consider that here. Where we should most logically
+expect the hand of Providence is in the human order, because in that
+order catastrophe is infinitely more important, in view of man's
+capacity for pain. Yet it is precisely in regard to this order that the
+theologian is vaguest and least satisfactory. He talks grandly of God
+moving every atom in the universe, counting the hairs of our heads,
+numbering (but not preventing) the fall of the sparrows, and so on; but
+when we ask for the evidence of God's concern with contemporary human
+events he is very vague if they are good events, and, if they are evil,
+he hastily disclaims any interference of the Deity. Some of our more
+advanced theologians are claiming that the finest improvement they have
+made in their science is to have brought God from _without_ the universe
+(where no theologian had ever put him) and make him _immanent_ in it.
+But they seem just as incapable as the others to trace his interposition
+in human events.
+
+Theologians still maintain a valiant and stubborn fight against
+scientific men, but they do not fight historians. They are very keen on
+maintaining the influence of God over atoms and stars and roses and
+birds, but not half so keen to vindicate it in the life of man. The
+story of the world, _our_ world, may be divided into three chapters: a
+chapter describing the moulding of the globe and the rocks, a chapter
+describing the slow evolution of the plants and animals, and a chapter
+describing the antics and fortunes of man. Some may surrender the first
+chapter to science, some the second chapter, but it looks as if they all
+surrender the third. They have long been accustomed to surrender the
+early part, and very much the longer and more laborious part, of man's
+story to natural forces, or the devil. Then there was a melodramatic
+notion that God, after the lapse of hundreds of thousands of years,
+began to take an interest in one very small people and kept revealing
+things to it, and smiting its enemies, until Christianity was given to
+the world. History tells the story in a totally different way. We find
+the stream of moral and religious evolution flowing steadily on nineteen
+hundred years ago, much as we do to-day. At this point, of course, the
+theologian does make a struggle with the historian. In proportion to the
+imperfectness of his culture and the backwardness and conservatism of
+his Church, he fights for miraculous interpositions in human events
+nineteen hundred years ago. But we need not delay to examine that
+difference of opinion, because the later period suffices for my purpose.
+
+A few theologians, not well acquainted with history, see another
+miraculous interposition in the fourth century, when Christianity was
+established; and the Roman Catholic--in the intellectual rear, as
+usual--believes in hundreds of miraculous interpositions, in small
+matters, as late as the year 1914. But in order to take a broad view of
+the matter we may leave these controversies with the more reactionary on
+one side. The history of Europe for the last fifteen centuries at least
+is now entrusted to able laymen, and it has been purged of divine
+interpositions. Innumerable myths and legends, often based on what are
+now acknowledged to be spurious documents, have been cast out of the
+science, and we are presented with a quite continuous and purely natural
+sequence of events. Religious historians like Bishop Creighton or Lord
+Bryce do not find their periods broken by divine interpositions; the
+writers of the Cambridge History do not occasionally arrest us before
+some great event and warn us that the chain of human causation seems to
+be obscure or discontinuous. There are, of course, problems of history,
+but they are not obscurities which, like the obscure places in science,
+tempt the theologian to enter and claim a divine interposition. The
+story is from beginning to end--to use Nietzsche's phrase--"human, all
+too human." On the whole, as it has been hitherto written, it is a story
+of wars, and, though patriotic piety puts its gloss on the issue of a
+war here and there, the historian does not find any serious problem in
+them. No French historian will now claim divine action in the Napoleonic
+wars, and assuredly few of us are prepared to see the finger of God in
+the fortunate issue of Prussia's many campaigns since Frederick the
+Great.
+
+Whatever we may think of the cosmic process generally, the human part of
+that process does not encourage a theological interpretation. Man is
+working out his own destiny, and doing it ill. We see him, like some
+pedlar plodding along a country road under his burdens, carrying through
+whole centuries institutions and ideas and follies that he will
+eventually shed. When he drops them, there is no more element of
+miracle or revelation in his action than when he discovers the use of
+steam or of aluminium or of the spectroscope. His mind expands and his
+ideals rise. It is a little incongruous to suppose that some infinitely
+wiser and affectionate parent was looking on all the time and giving no
+assistance. In the dialogue between Mephistopheles and God which Goethe
+prefixes to his _Faust_, the devil obviously scores. In the sight of
+such an intelligence man must have made a pretty fool of himself during
+the last 1500 years. We human beings are more charitable. Take the whole
+story as the gradual development of human intelligence and emotion under
+unfavourable political conditions, hampered by a despotic and perverse
+clergy, and it seems natural enough.
+
+This is the impression one gets from history, and the nearer history is
+to our own time and the better we know it, the less it suggests a divine
+guidance. There is something parochial or rural about the average
+Christian way of looking at events. One day the German Christian goes to
+church to thank God for driving the Russians out of East Prussia; the
+next day the English Christian thanks the same God for killing or
+wounding 20,000 Germans at Neuve Chapelle--with the help of 350 guns.
+Yet such things as these are the only claims we have offered to us of
+the action of God in human events. Neither the steps that man takes
+onward nor the steps that he takes backward are ascribed to divine
+influence. All that is claimed is that when a ship goes down, for
+instance, he saves the saved, and "permits" the rest to be drowned; when
+a war has been raging for a few months by his "permission," he puts a
+stop to it when one army is worn out. The unbeliever is really entitled
+to a good deal of sympathy for his inability to follow this tortuous
+reasoning with confidence. One cannot entirely blame him for being more
+interested in the heart of man than in the petals of a rose.
+
+These considerations are, of course, not novel. I am only applying to
+this special case of the war a difficulty that has been discussed in all
+ages, and has been acutely felt by very able religious thinkers. How a
+group of bishops can sit down to write, in very deliberate and elegant
+language, that such a calamity as this makes the soul more sensible of
+"the approach of Christ" is one of the many little mysteries of the
+clerical mind. It has precisely the opposite effect in any logical mind.
+When the way of life is smooth, and our nation or home is prospering, we
+may be genially disposed to think that God is near and is looking after
+us as well as the sparrows. But when a black storm bursts suddenly and
+disastrously on us; when the earth shakes their roofs on ten thousand of
+our fellows, or a great ship strikes a rock and pours a laughing crowd
+suddenly into the lap of death; when vast provinces are laid desolate by
+war, and we see the tens of thousands clasping the hand of their loved
+ones for the last time, it seems rather uncanny that this should suggest
+to any person the approach of Christ. To very many people it is a
+confirmation of the general impression they get from the world-process
+and the story of man: that these great forces deploy and interlace and
+build up and destroy without the slightest intervention from without.
+
+In our time, we must remember, this difficulty had already been
+enormously increased. St. Augustine, who felt the problem acutely in the
+prime of his intelligence, had really a very much lighter task than the
+modern divine. He had merely to suggest why evil was permitted in the
+narrow world he knew; and he had the great advantage of being able to
+appeal to a primitive sin and primitive punishment of the race. The
+problem became more serious when original sin, or at least the notion
+that the race might justly be damned for one man's fault, was abandoned.
+It became graver still when science discovered the tombs of inhabitants
+of this globe who had lived during millions of earlier years, and showed
+that the very law of their life and progress was struggle against evil.
+Every attempt to minimise the struggle of those earlier ages has failed.
+At a time when there was no possibility of "spiritual advantage" there
+was acute consciousness of pain, the struggle and suffering were
+prodigious. Theistic literature of the last half century, growing more
+weary and more wistful in each decade, reflects the increasing
+difficulty. If any man can see in this war a relief of the difficulty,
+and not an appalling accentuation and illustration of it, he must be
+gifted with a peculiar type of mind and emotion. It is more probable
+that an increasing number will conclude that, if God is indifferent to
+these things, they will be indifferent to him. Professor William James,
+in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, declared that the only gods
+the men of the new generation would recognise would be gods of some use
+to them. The war does not encourage the chances of the Christian God.
+
+A few modern religious thinkers seem to imagine that they have found
+some relief by devising the formula that God's plan is to "co-operate
+with man," and in those modern advances which I have freely admitted
+they see indications of this co-operation. This new formula is not a
+whit better than the other phrases which have, at various stages, been
+regarded by religions people as profound thoughts. In the recent history
+of moral progress we have, as a rule, a minority of high-minded men and
+women struggling to impress their sentiments on the inert majority. The
+new theologian is not daunted in the application of his theory by the
+fact that a large proportion of these pioneers did not believe in God at
+all, so I will not discuss that aspect; though no doubt the plain man
+will find it interesting to trace how, in the earlier and more difficult
+days of modern humanism, so few of the reformers were Christian
+ministers and so many Rationalists. From the historical point of view,
+however, we find this line of development quite intelligible. We find,
+for instance, Robert Owen (a great Rationalist) advocating the
+substitution of arbitration for war nearly a century ago, and we
+discover the earlier sources of Owen's enthusiasm in English Radicals
+like Godwin, who were affected by the early French Revolutionaries, who
+had been influenced by Rousseau, and so on. It is a quite natural
+evolution of ideas, as they find a congenial soil in each generation in
+certain types of temperament. But where are the traces or what was the
+nature of God's co-operation with these men? Looking to their generally
+heterodox character and the hostility of the Churches to them, the idea
+is not without humour; but, even if we reconcile ourselves to this
+peculiar feature, anything in the nature of positive evidence of divine
+action is wholly lacking, and we can understand the whole process
+without it. The theory is merely a desperate and unfounded assertion of
+men who are determined that God shall not be left out.
+
+There is a further grave difficulty. One would imagine that the kind of
+paternal affection which is ascribed to God would have induced him to
+intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with
+the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the
+less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man.
+Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need
+judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even
+less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth
+and twentieth centuries seem able to dispense with his co-operation,
+while the ignorant and priest-ridden children of earlier ages could do
+little of themselves. The theologians who have found this new formula
+are of the more liberal school. They do not attribute all the blunders
+and crimes and failures of the Middle Ages to free will, to a sheer and
+deliberate obstinacy in clinging to evil. They realise the overpowering
+nature of the environment and the drastic discouragement by the clergy
+of anything like novelty or initiative in ethics. It was then that man
+needed God, if there is a God. But, on this theory, God argued with the
+academic wisdom of a medieval theologian; he concluded that medieval men
+were quite capable of originating modern ideas, and he would not
+co-operate until they did. The theory is preposterous in every respect.
+
+Finally, we have the very large class of candid or of hopelessly puzzled
+Christians who give up the matter as a mystery. They do not understand
+how this ruling of the universe which they seem to see clearly in stars
+and flowers should become so obscure or disappear altogether in the
+human order. They realise that, if this war were an isolated
+occurrence, they might imagine God holding his hand for a season, for
+some reason unknown to us; but they know that it is not an isolated
+occurrence: it is part of the human order of things. It has been
+preceded by other wars at intervals of every few years, and war itself
+is only one of a series of catastrophes and calamities that splash the
+human chronicle with innocent blood. They give it up, sorrowfully, and
+find a thin consolation in learned formulae about the impossibility of a
+finite mind understanding an infinite mind, and so on: which give, as I
+say, thin consolation, for one may at least see that an infinite
+benevolence ought not to act worse than a moderate human benevolence.
+
+Now if there were any very strong evidence of divine ruling outside the
+human order, we might find a certain amount of logic in this position.
+The mystery of a God who moves the stars and inspires the bees, yet
+leaves man to his own unhappy impulses (after putting those impulses in
+him), would be, one imagines, painful enough; but if there were
+irresistible evidence that God does move the stars and quicken the bird
+and beast, we might be compelled to reconcile ourselves to that unhappy
+dilemma. There is, however, no such irresistible evidence. This is not
+the place to examine such evidence as is adduced. I must be content to
+recall the fact that it is all highly controverted; that theologians
+tear to pieces each other's "proofs" of the existence of God; and that a
+large and increasing body of cultivated men and women discard the
+evidence entirely. So that, in the last resort, the situation is this:
+on the one hand we have a number of very disputable suggestions, which
+are growing fainter in proportion as science investigates these matters,
+of divine action in stars and rocks and reptiles, and on the other hand
+we have a stupendous mass of suffering, starting millions of years ago
+at the very birth of consciousness and piled up mountains high in this
+year 1915, which no thinker has ever yet reconciled with the notion of a
+divine ruling of the life of man. This is a very grave and plain
+situation, and if the clergy have nothing more to say about it than to
+borrow from an ancient Hebrew certain offensive gibes at the unbeliever,
+or to offer us the kind of apologies we examined in the last chapter,
+one must conclude that they do not realise the situation. The war has
+terribly accentuated the most terrible difficulty they ever had to face.
+Whether there is intelligence manifested in nature is, after all, an
+academic question which does not profoundly stir the modern world.
+Whether there is benevolence, a moral personality, reflected in the
+course of man's history is the much more important question. And this
+appalling calamity will induce many to take a more candid view of the
+world-process and conclude that, as far as the critical eye can see,
+man's world seems to be left entirely to his own efforts, to his own
+crimes and blunders and aspirations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE
+
+
+If the observations I have made in the preceding chapters are even
+approximately just, the hope which many of the clergy express, that
+there will be a religious revival at the close of the war, is very
+singular. No doubt it means, on the whole, that some advantage to
+religion will be sought in the flood of genial and generous emotion
+which will surge through the country. In Germany and Austria, one
+imagines, religion will have a rough experience. The people who wrote
+and repeated constantly, "Gott strafe England"--which, by the way, is
+another proof that the general German attitude is theological rather
+than humanist--will have a few serious questions to put to the clergy,
+as well as to their secular rulers. In France, despite the reports of
+interested people, there will be little change. The nation, being
+overwhelmingly Rationalistic, relied on its 75-centimetre guns rather
+than on prayer, and will find its wisdom justified. But in England and
+Russia, and in the backward Slav countries, there will be mighty
+flag-waving in Church, and no doubt a great number of not very
+thoughtful people will conclude that the clergy and the Y.M.C.A. and the
+Salvation Army have behaved very nicely over the whole affair, and there
+will be, for a time, an increased attendance at church.
+
+We may suppose that this emotional storm will not last long, and the
+nation will settle down to face the bill, the empty chairs at home, and
+the disorganisation of its industries. Then will arise the questions I
+have been endeavouring to answer in this little book. The clergy behaved
+very well during the war, short of volunteering in any conspicuous
+number for active service; but what is the sense of this lofty message
+of "peace on earth and good-will among men" which never produces any
+result? The Churches are fairly eager to join in the work of peace now
+that it is being promoted by large associations of laymen; but where, in
+the name of heaven, were they during these "ages of faith" which they
+bemoan? God may conceivably have been at work somewhere among the
+batteries or the infantry of the Allies--it is so very difficult to
+analyse these things--but we should be infinitely more grateful if he
+had asserted his power earlier and spared us all the bloodshed. He may
+be a very stern schoolmaster, teaching us a valuable lesson by means of
+this war; but we were really quite open to conviction if he had sent us
+the lesson in a more humane form. A great many good people may have
+derived spiritual advantages from the war, but the price was stupendous,
+and we would rather they got their spiritual advantages in another way.
+
+These questions and reflections must surely arise, and they will lead to
+larger reflections. Men will perceive the antithesis I pointed out
+between all that is claimed for Christianity in Europe and the actual
+condition of Europe; between the supposed luminous traces of the finger
+of God in the non-human world and the complete absence of them from the
+human world. From the samples of clerical eloquence which we have
+examined, we can hardly suppose that the clergy will have great success
+in meeting the inquirers. An enormous proportion of their followers, of
+course, will not ask questions, or will be satisfied with anything in
+the nature of an answer. I heard a group of men discussing the subject
+in a rural ale-house, and the most intelligent man in the group, to
+whom, as an educated visitor, the natives looked up with respect, said:
+"War is God's way of purifying and bracing nations from time to time."
+This sort of stuff pacifies hundreds of thousands: like the stuff that
+Archbishop Carr found it possible to put before his Australian
+Catholics. But inquiry and reflection grow among the adherents of the
+Churches, and, although the Press generally refuses to bring books of
+this character to the notice of the public, and clergymen often stoop to
+the most despicable means to exclude them from bookstalls and shops,
+they seem to find a fairly large public to-day. Thinking is as needful
+an exercise for the mind as work is for the body, and the only plausible
+ground on which you can seek to suppress thinking about Christianity is
+the fear that it will not be good for Christianity.
+
+Then we shall have the next and inevitable question: What would you put
+in the place of Christianity? Young men in various parts of the country
+hurl that question at one as if it were really very serious, putting an
+end to all dispute. Any person who is quite candid and sincere about
+these matters can find the material for an answer easily enough. Take
+France. Forty years ago the nation was overwhelmingly Christian; to-day
+it is overwhelmingly non-Christian. It has not put anything in the place
+of Christianity, and has prospered remarkably. There is a legacy of what
+is called vice which comes down from earlier religious times, but any
+person who cares to examine criminal and other statistics, the only
+positive tests of a nation's health, will find that France has been
+extraordinarily successful without Christianity and without putting
+anything in its place. There are, it is true, moral lessons in its
+schools, but I would not claim that they are much responsible: the
+system is imperfect, and the teachers not well equipped. Take our ally
+Japan. The moral discipline of the nation, which, in spite of some
+recent deterioration through Western influence, is admirable, does not
+rest on religious foundations. Take London or any metropolis of modern
+Europe. The bulk of the people have ceased to receive any influence from
+the representatives of Christianity, yet there has been moral progress
+instead of deterioration. Those who speak of degeneration in London or
+Paris do not accurately know and estimate the state of those cities in
+more religious times.
+
+This experience might be enlarged indefinitely, but one or two instances
+will suffice for my purpose. The soundness of these instances which I
+quote I have established elsewhere, and the general truth to which I
+refer may be sufficiently gathered from the words of the clergy
+themselves. The rhetorical way in which they characterise our times is
+more or less typical of the carelessness of their judgments and the
+strength of their prejudices. One group of clerical writers, which
+generally includes the reigning Pope, speak in the darkest terms of our
+age and suggest that a sensible degeneration has followed the decrease
+of the influence of the Churches. Another group, considering the
+remarkable spread of idealism in our generation, the growing demand for
+peace, justice, and sobriety, claim that this moral progress, which they
+cannot deny, is due to some tardy recognition of the spirit of Christ:
+a strange contention, seeing that our age is less and less willing to
+hear the words of Christ and ascribes its sentiments to entirely
+different inspiration. Hence there are a few who frankly admit that the
+idealism of modern times is to them a rebuke and a mystery. One of these
+more sensitive religious writers once confessed to me that the fact that
+the times became better while the influence of Christianity grew less
+was to him a perplexing truth.
+
+The really honest social student, who does not measure his age by his
+prejudices, but fashions his theories according to the carefully
+ascertained facts, will try to discover the causes of this phenomenon.
+In those wide and varied areas where it is observed, we cannot say that
+anything has taken the place of Christianity. The Press sometimes
+flatters itself that it has taken the place of the pulpit, but opinions
+will differ in regard to its efficacy as a moral agency. On the whole,
+it is too apt to reflect the moral sentiments of the more reactionary,
+who are generally the most self-assertive, and it has no moral, as
+distinct from political, leadership. Then there are Ethical and kindred
+societies which hold "services" of a humanitarian character, and are to
+many people a substitute for the Christian Churches. Their influence is,
+however, restricted to a few thousand people in the whole country, and
+signs are not wanting that their usefulness will be only transitory. The
+experience of any careful observer is that the mass of people who cease
+to attend church desire and need no substitute whatever for
+Christianity. The Rationalist literature which many of them read is, as
+a rule, of a high idealist character; but here again the influence is
+very restricted. No organised influence is at work to any great extent
+as a successor to Christianity, yet it is indubitable that, as Christian
+influence wanes, the temper of the age improves.
+
+This improvement must have an adequate cause, and it would be merely
+another form of crude social reasoning and of sectarian prejudice to
+say, in the rich language of the older anti-clericals, that breaking
+"the fetters of superstition and priestcraft" led of itself to such a
+result. But this sanguine rhetoric does contain or obscure a certain
+truth. In plain human language, when you prevent a man from relying on
+the old traditional inspirations, he may for a time be tempted to act
+without inspiration. In the matter of his dealings with his fellows it
+is an undeniable fact that, on the whole, he has not been thus tempted.
+It is absurd to heap up all the contemporary instances of corruption in
+trade and politics, looseness in domestic life, and so on, unless you
+make a similar study of the vices and crimes of an earlier and more
+Christian generation, and carefully compare the two. It is not a
+question whether there is evil in our generation; it is a question
+whether there is more or less evil than in earlier generations. I must
+be pardoned for reiterating this, because, although this comparison is
+essential for forming an accurate judgment on the moral effect of the
+decay of Christianity, it is rarely instituted with the least pretence
+of rigour. I have sufficiently studied it in earlier works (especially
+_The Bible in Europe_), and will not repeat the facts. Cotter Morison,
+whom I quoted on an early page, was wrong in his expectation. The change
+from Christian to humanist inspiration is taking place without disorder
+and with increasing advantage.
+
+The solution of this apparent problem is really not obscure. If the
+genuine basis of human conduct needed an elaborate search--if it had to
+be revealed by a Deity or laboriously established by moral theologians
+or moral philosophers--no doubt the age of transition would be an age of
+disorder, and a very comprehensive educational organisation would be
+needed. But the true basis of human conduct is simple. There are, of
+course, Rationalists who feel that some very abstruse "science of
+ethics" has to be constructed as the solid foundation of conduct; but
+this has as little relation to the conduct of ordinary men as the
+learned pedants of the science of prosody have to ordinary speakers of
+prose. Experience is the real base and guide of conduct, and it forces
+itself on every man and woman, even on the child. "Do unto others as you
+would that they should do unto you" is the first principle of morals;
+and to inculcate it you need neither the thunders of Jupiter nor the
+impressive abstractions of a science of ethics: nor do you need any
+moral genius or philosophical skill to discover it. It is a rule of life
+that suggests itself spontaneously. It is a natural and prompt
+expression of the fact that our life is social: our acts have the
+closest relation to others besides ourselves. Now and again, perhaps, a
+man is tempted to assert his own personality, or seek his own
+gratification, in such a way as to ignore his fellows; but he is usually
+arrested before long by the simple experience that he himself suffers
+from the actions of others just as they may suffer from his conduct. It
+is a lesson of life which one needs no power of analysis to learn.
+
+And the chief reason why the abandonment of the old doctrines is
+proceeding without any moral degeneration is that this experience was
+really always the basis of general morality. We need not question--it
+would be absurd to question--that refined natures have received moral
+aid from their belief in the presence of God, or in a desire to please
+God by accepting the law of virtue as a declaration of his will; though
+we must be equally candid in admitting that men and women of this nature
+have not been observed to deteriorate when they sacrifice their
+religious beliefs, as thousands of them have done. On the other hand, we
+will hardly question that numbers of people of coarser nature have been
+deterred from evil-doing by dread of supernatural punishment. It is,
+however, notorious in the moral history of Europe that these religious
+beliefs have been consistent with a vast amount of transgression of the
+decalogue: more than we witness in any civilised country in our own
+time. How, then, are we to discover what were the real springs of
+conduct in the mass of ordinarily decent people? It seems to me that the
+only accurate method is to avoid theories and consider people in the
+flesh. Do our Christian friends--did we ourselves in Christian
+days--refrain from lying, dishonesty, injustice, cruelty, and injury,
+solely or mainly because God forbids them or will punish them? I have
+not met the man, except in the imaginative pages of religious
+controversy, who confessed that he would stoop freely to these things if
+there were no Christian prohibition. The mainspring of ordinary decent
+conduct in any educated community has always been a perception of its
+human and social value.
+
+The only line of the decalogue about which there is likely to be any
+dispute in this regard is that putting restraint on sexual relations. I
+have not to consider here a subject so remote from my immediate
+interest, and will observe only that any act which hurts either an
+individual or the social interest will as plainly come under a
+humanitarian law as the practice of lying: acts which inflict no injury
+and have been forbidden only on mystic grounds are not likely to remain
+on the moral code of the future. But I am concerned here with a definite
+issue, and need discuss general morality only in so far as that issue is
+affected.
+
+Here, at least, the way of the humanitarian is plain. Sermons on the
+brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God have been totally
+ineffective to prevent war and abolish militarism. There is something
+incongruous in the introduction into a modern peace-meeting of some
+clerical speaker who talks unctuously about the great promise and
+precept of Christianity. The meeting itself, being held nineteen
+centuries after the promise was made, is a sufficient indication of its
+futility. No progress was made or seriously attempted in the work of
+peace until a genuine human passion was substituted for that empty
+phraseology. The brotherhood of men was, in the Christian sense of that
+phrase, too abstruse and precarious a conclusion to be of use in such a
+struggle. The plain fact is that it was of no use, and is of no use
+to-day. There is, indeed, reason to think that we should make more
+progress if we entirely discarded figures of speech like "the
+brotherhood of men." The fact that we are all children of God, or
+children of Eve, or children of some Tertiary anthropoid, does not very
+obviously impose on us the duty not to take up arms in an international
+quarrel.
+
+The ultimate basis of morality is, as Schopenhauer said, sympathy,
+though in an advanced social order this sentiment approves itself to
+the intellect, and its requirements may be precisely formulated by
+reason. One is not sure whether there will not be more morality in the
+world when the word "morality," with all its mystic entanglements, is
+discarded, and we speak plainly of social law. Violence, the infliction
+of pain and injustice, is one of the most obvious infractions of social
+law, quite apart from any religious commandments. Its social evil is so
+obvious that the community has, at an early date in its development,
+elaborated a special machinery for restraining it, and has imposed
+penalties in this world, whatever it thinks about the next. There may be
+questions raised, and one can understand people who are confined to a
+religious environment feeling a genuine concern, about other sections of
+moral law; but it would be obviously absurd to think that a humanitarian
+ethic would fail here. There have been attempts in modern times to
+question the validity of ethical law altogether. In so far as this
+movement aims at stripping moral law of its mysticism and fearlessly
+investigating its traditional content, it is admirable and will grow;
+but in so far as these moral rebels would resent restraint of any kind,
+and pronounce the freedom of every individual impulse, they seem to
+overlook a factor of great importance--the impulse of retaliation. A
+pretty state of society we should have if such a theory were generally,
+or largely, carried into practice.
+
+But these are academic vagaries, like those of the mystic or the moral
+theologian. Whatever be the future fortune of Christian legends, men are
+not likely to sacrifice the peace and security of social life to such
+theories of freedom any more than they are likely to expose property to
+a general scramble. The instinct of sympathy is now growing deeper in
+every century. Most of the great improvements of social life (in its
+widest sense) during the nineteenth century, which we have inherited,
+were due to that development of sympathy. It matters not whether the
+reformer was Christian or non-Christian--Elizabeth Fry and Florence
+Nightingale or Robert Owen and John Stuart Mill--the impulse was
+sympathy with suffering fellow-humans. All the hope of improvement in
+the twentieth century looks to a continued growth of that sentiment. It
+becomes a veritable passion in certain natures, as long as there are
+large and cruel evils to redress; and this passion of a few leading
+spirits, communicating something of its fire to the colder mass, is the
+great cause of progress. Surely that is the correct interpretation of
+the progressive life of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries? Men
+realised that to cultivate sympathy because it was enjoined by religion
+was a more or less mercantile procedure: it was worth cultivating for
+its own sake.
+
+Here we have the reply to those who, unfamiliar with any but their own
+religious environment, ask what place there will be for sympathy in an
+intellectual or nationalistic age. It is a very grave error to suppose
+either that our age is becoming less emotional or that Rationalism has
+no place for emotions. In pursuing its task during the nineteenth
+century Rationalism was an intensely emotional movement. Mr G. K.
+Chesterton, in his _Victorian Age in Literature_, speaks of J. S. Mill's
+"hard rationalism in religion" and "hard egoism in ethics." Like very
+many other statements in that lamentable book, these are inexplicably
+unjust. Mill was so far from being "hard" in religion that he ended his
+days in a kind of sentimental theism; he was so far from being a "hard
+egoist" in ethics that he declared that he would burn in hell for ever
+rather than lie at the supposed bidding of a Deity. Robert Ingersoll,
+the most popular Rationalist of that age, was--I judge from his private
+letters, not his ornate speeches--a man of the most tender and fine
+sentiment. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that, because we do not
+admit emotion to be a test of the accuracy of statements of fact (as all
+religious dogmas claim to be), we do not find any room for emotion in
+life. Is the whole of man's life an affirmation about reality or
+criticism of such affirmation? This supposed "hardness"--I detest these
+vague phrases, but one knows what is meant--of the Rationalist temper is
+one of the strangest myths the clergy have invented.
+
+Reason not merely approves, but enjoins, the cultivation of sentiment.
+When the sentiment in question is one that shows a power of transforming
+life and impelling men to struggle against pain and evil, reason
+applauds it as one of the most valuable forces we can cultivate. Such,
+plainly, is the sentiment of sympathy. We look back to-day with horror
+on the industrial and social condition of England in the earlier part of
+the nineteenth century: the burdened lives and few gross pleasures of
+the workers, the horrible cellar-homes of the poor, the ghastly
+treatment of child-workers, the stupid and brutal herding of criminals,
+the tragedies of asylums and workhouses, the fearful political
+corruption and despotism, the subjection of women, the revolting
+proportions of the birth-rate and death-rate. We have still much to do
+to redeem our civilisation from medieval errors, but when one
+contemplates the social revolution that human sympathy has brought about
+in the life of England, one feels that this, and not the long-futile
+teaching of Christianity, is the hope of the future. Christian preaching
+of virtue has been individualistic. Even in our time the clergy hesitate
+and are divided in face of social problems which plainly involve moral
+principles. But the humanitarian ethic is essentially social, and this
+passion of sympathy is its chief root.
+
+We wish, then, not to substitute any creed or organisation for
+Christianity, but to sweep away these primitive or medieval speculations
+about life, and let the human mind and human heart increasingly devote
+themselves, directly, to human interests. In discussing the question of
+peace and war, the application is obvious. We enclose or dispatch the
+murderer, lest some fresh grave act of violence be perpetrated. We agree
+that the violent and premature termination of a life is the most serious
+transgression of social law that a man can perpetrate. Next to it we put
+rape, mutilation, the destruction of a man's home or fortune; all acts,
+in a word, that come nearest to it in threatening or causing the
+greatest desolation. Yet we have suffered, age after age, that every few
+years all these acts should be gathered into one mighty outrage and
+showered upon whole populations. The time will come when men will read
+with bewilderment the things that have been written about warfare in the
+nineteenth, and even the twentieth, century. The men of clear judgment
+and sound emotion of some coming age will see anguish rising, as vapour
+does from some tropical sea, from our vast battle-fields. They will read
+of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for
+Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors
+to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands
+of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and
+children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the
+superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and
+shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they
+will see that same generation in a few months grow dully indifferent to,
+if not actively supporting, the military system which invariably brings
+these horrors every few years upon the world. They will read of social
+aspiration spreading through our civilisation, and statesmen regretting
+that want of funds alone prevents them from remedying our social ills;
+and they will read how Europe in one year wasted in butchery the
+resources that might have renovated its disfigured civilisation, and the
+next year complacently shouldered its military burden, its annual waste
+of a thousand millions sterling, with the prospect of a costlier war
+than ever.
+
+In face of this situation the question, What would you put in place of
+Christianity? is a mere mockery. One can see some pertinence and use in
+the question: How shall we induce the Christian Churches to employ their
+still great resources in helping to bring on the reign of peace? But it
+is not to them that we now look for redemption. It is to the
+humanitarian spirit, the clearer reason, of our age. I have described
+the situation in terms of emotion, because thus it spontaneously rises
+before me; but it may be recorded in terms of pure reason. We maintain
+in Europe a machinery for settling international quarrels which costs us
+more than a thousand millions sterling annually, while we could erect at
+a cost of a few thousands annually an efficient machinery for dealing
+with those quarrels, and for a few millions we could add the machinery
+for carrying out its decisions. We boast that our civilisation is
+founded on justice; yet, of the two types of machinery for adjusting
+quarrels, we retain the one that is the least possible adapted for
+securing the triumph of justice and discard the one that is
+pre-eminently fitted to secure it. We flatter ourselves that we rise
+above the savage in enjoying security of life and property, and we
+retain this system though we know that, periodically, it will invade
+life and property on a scale that surpasses the experience of the savage
+as much as a Dreadnought surpasses a canoe.
+
+It is just as easy to state our situation in terms of reason as in terms
+of sentiment: it would not be easy to say in which guise it is ugliest.
+Let us talk no more nonsense about needing religion to help us to get
+rid of this atrocious nightmare. It drives both reason and sentiment to
+the brink of insanity. Both protest against it with every particle of
+their energy. Why Christianity failed to protest against it in fifteen
+hundred years may or may not be obscure; but there is no obscurity
+whatever about the probable effect on militarism and war of a
+cultivation of reason and sympathy.[3]
+
+Many a reform has been actually retarded by the use of rhetoric. An
+outpour of vehement language seems to release, both in the speaker and
+in the assenting audience, a part of that energy which ought to issue in
+action. It has been one of the grave blunders of the Churches that they
+thought their function ended with the eloquent announcement that men
+were brothers. We must be more practical. Now, while the imagination of
+the world is filled with the horrors of war, and sympathy is ready to
+fire us with a mighty energy, is one of the great opportunities of
+peace. One may trust that, after this experience, the Churches will
+awaken to the implications of their moral doctrine and set to work to
+impress it emphatically and repeatedly, as a moral duty, on their
+followers. It is, however, not impossible that, with all their
+scoutmasters and chaplains and services of thanksgiving for victory, a
+very large part of the clergy will find themselves so closely allied
+with militarism when the war is over, so confused in their appreciation
+of what it has done for us, that they will continue to mumble only
+general principles and halting counsels. In any case, in the cities and
+large towns of this kingdom, where are found the effective controllers
+of our destiny, the majority do not any longer sit at the feet of the
+clergy. Precise statistical observation has shown this.
+
+Let us remember that the one task before us is to inspire the _majority_
+in each civilised nation with a determination that the system shall end.
+The only practical difficulty of considerable magnitude is the economic
+difficulty: the disorganisation of the industrial world by suppressing
+war-industries and large standing armies. It is, however, foolish to
+regard this as an obstacle to disarmament, since--to put an extreme
+case--it would be more profitable to a nation to maintain these men in
+idleness than run the risk of another war. For disarmament itself what
+is needed is that half a dozen, at least, of the great Powers shall
+agree to submit _all_ quarrels to arbitration, and reduce their armies
+to the proportions of an international police, at the service of the
+international tribunal and for use (under its permit) against lower
+peoples who turn aggressive. No one doubts that this can be done when
+the Powers agree to do it. But for one reason or other, which I need not
+discuss, the Governments will probably not do this until a majority of
+the electorate indicate a resolute demand for it. The immediate task is
+to secure this majority by education; and the work of education will be
+best conducted by vast non-sectarian peace-organisations. The mixture of
+futile Christian phraseology and genuine humanitarian interests in some
+of these movements has been hitherto a grave disadvantage. The movement
+has been compelled to split into sectarian branches, and has
+proportionately lost efficacy. If the clergy insist on winning prestige
+for themselves, or respect and recognition for their doctrines, by
+acting in these bodies, they are again hampering the work of reform. A
+great national agitation, linked with similar agitations in other lands,
+avoiding Christian formulae as well as anti-Christian reproaches, will
+alone secure the object.
+
+I confess--with ardent hope that I may be wrong--that I expect no
+immediate realisation of the reform. It may take years, even after the
+grim lesson that militarism has given us, to inspire the majority of our
+people with an unsleeping and irresistible demand, and the work will
+grow more arduous as the memory of the hardships of the war fades. On
+the day on which I write this I have listened to the conversation, in a
+train, of a wealthy, refined, and cultivated Churchwoman. "I said to my
+son when he set out," she observed, with a laugh, to her neighbour,
+"that it was far better for him to get shot than to die of diphtheria or
+something at home." If that sentiment, that obtuseness to the massive
+horrors of war even when a son was involved, is widespread, the outlook
+is dark. One fears that it is not very promising.
+
+The lady I quote would read these pages, if she could constrain herself
+to do so, with a genuine shudder. Abandon Christianity! She would
+volubly reel off the eloquent forecasts of the doom of society which she
+has heard from a hundred pulpits. Meantime she is one of the gravest
+obstacles (as a type of her class) to the removal from society of one of
+its most crushing burdens and most criminal usages. To me her class
+illustrates the limitations of Christianity, and it confirms me in the
+belief that we shall make more rapid progress without it. She was a lady
+of keen sympathies and of great activity for others: the kind of woman
+who, as she would put it, practised her Christianity. Yet in face of
+this mighty disorder she showed at once the failure of Christianity and
+the reason of it. Her genuine human sympathy was directed by an ancient
+and outworn code of duties. Where Christianity had delivered no clear
+message, the expanding of her sympathy was barred. War was part of the
+established order of things. She could even cheat her maternal sentiment
+with thin fallacies, because they reconciled her to what the Church had
+not condemned. She had never seen the vision of peace, never grasped the
+comparatively easy alternative to war.
+
+This, in general terms, is what one means by the expectation that a
+surrender of Christian doctrines will certainly not check the growth of
+sympathy, and is more likely to promote it. It will direct itself
+spontaneously to departments of suffering to which the Church had not
+directed it. But we should be foolish to rely on this free growth and
+spontaneous application of sympathy. It must be cultivated: our
+generation must be educated to a sense of its value. As far as the child
+is concerned, the need is plain. Children do not merely have veins of
+cruelty; they have, as comparative psychology knows, the blood and
+impulses of primitive man. The general impulse of a healthy boy is to
+exact an eye for an eye: the impulse which it is the supreme care of a
+modern State to curb in its citizens. To educate such children in
+military history, whether of ancient Jews or medieval Englishmen or
+modern Germans, is, as William II knows, the best means of maintaining
+war. As to the New Testament, its language is not addressed to children,
+its sentiments are often so obviously impracticable that it defeats the
+end of education, and its precepts and counsels are so emphatically
+based on a disputable reward in heaven that their ethic savours of a
+risky commercial speculation. We must abandon "Bible lessons," and teach
+children to be human.
+
+But for the work of education to end when the child leaves the school is
+one of the crudities of our elementary civilisation. The human material
+is just becoming fit for the efforts of the educator when the child
+leaves school, yet from that moment we leave it to the casual and
+largely pernicious influences of its environment. Some day, perhaps, our
+education department will be more seriously concerned about the youth
+and the adult than about impressing a few facts of history and geography
+on the memory of the child: even if it did no more than organise and
+direct the innumerable foundations and voluntary organisations which
+actually exist, and bring them into living and practical contact with
+our splendid museums and libraries and art-collections, a vast amount
+could be done in the education of the adult. Meantime a persistent,
+comprehensive, intensely earnest propaganda of peace is needed. Since I
+wrote a little work on those lines in 1899 I have had fifteen years'
+experience of preaching the gospel of peace, and know well how
+convincing are its arguments and how little it has to overcome except
+inertia. We need only to help the imagination of the mass of people; to
+put clearly before them the comparative easiness and the incalculable
+value of the change. Christianity has not tried and failed; it has not
+even tried. It has wasted its resources in generalities which have
+proved wholly futile. We must speak as men to men; and men will be more
+open to conviction when we plead that, not the supposed commands of a
+Galilean preacher of nineteen hundred years ago, but their own highest
+and most sacred instincts, bid them lay down their arms and inaugurate
+the age of international peace.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Service of Man_ (_6d._ edition), p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 2: As I write, the Press describes Canon Green of Burnley as
+saying that "the war is a divine judgment on the world--England for the
+last ten years has been God-forgetting, drunken, immoral."]
+
+[Footnote 3: Let me again guard myself against misrepresentation. Were I
+of military age, I should to-day be in the trenches. The men who, as
+long as the military system is retained, expose their lives in our
+defence have my entire respect and gratitude. It is the system I
+impugn.]
+
+
+Printed by Watts & Co., Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+
+
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